
Class _Cj_9Jl9l_ 

Book _ Ql ^f. 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 
AND OTHER LEAVES 



J 



^ „-_»*, 



A LEAYE OF ABSENCE 
AND OTHER LEAVES 



BY 



JOHN CALVIN GODDARD 



PRIVATELY PRINTED 

SALISBURY, CONNECTICUT 

M C M I 

v.- 



ITHE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAY. 28 1901 

.^Copyright entry 
CLASS«^Xc. N« 



copyrigbt, 1901 
By John Calvin Goddard 




^ 



DEDICATED TO 

MISS MARY ELDRIDGE 

OF NORFOLK, CONNECTICUT 

IN GRATEFUL 

REMEMBRANCE 



" I am a part of all that 1 have met." 

— Tennyson, " Ulysses. ' 






CONTENTS 

PAOE 

I The Look before you Leap . . 1 

II The Log 5 

III The Rail 14 

IV Naples 24 

V The Mediterranean .... 30 

VI Egypt 36 

VII Cairo 42 

VIII Jaffa G2 

IX Jerusalem 08 

X Carmel 78 

XI Nazareth 8G 

XII The Sea of Galilee .... 91 

XIII Farewell to Holy Land . . 99 

XIV My Farthest East .... 103 
XV Asia Minor 115 

XVI Constantinople 120 

XVII The Isles of Greece . . . .136 

XVIII Italy 150 

XIX Eome 155 

ix 



XXI 

XXII 

XXIII 

XXIV 

XXV 

XXVI 

XXVII 



CONTENTS 




Florence and Milan . 


PAGE 

162 


Travelling across Europe . 


169 


Paris the Gay and the Eair 


174 


England 


187 


Cathedrals and Universities . 


193 


English Sights and Insights . 


200 


The Home of Shakespeare 


204 


Homeward Bound 


209 



THE LOOK BEFOEE YOU LEAP 

BEFORE plunging into this ministerial vol- 
ume, the reader is cautioned against mis- 
taking it for a book of theological doctrine. 
On the contrary, there is far too little of anything 
improving in it! Prior to grappling with this jour- 
ney, the minister took off his coat (that Old 
Grimes-like coat, " all buttoned down before "), 
broke away from his white and other ties, and en- 
deavored to pass as the average man without any 
adventitious aid from " the cloth." This does not 
mean, necessarily, that he fell from grace, that he 
did in Rome as the roamers do, nor that he disap- 
pointed the devout parishioner of his, who peti- 
tioned in prayer meeting that " our pastor might 
not lose his religion while absent from us." It 
means merely that he used his eyes and ears chiefly 
as a man, not as a minister, so that this book is not 
to be suspected of homilies in disguise, nor is it 

l 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

written to be put under the pillow with Thomas a 
Kempis. 

On the other hand, it does not aspire to be a guide- 
book, interfering with the sale of Baedeker, nor 
does it contain " footprints that, perhaps, another " 
might use in the amiable but impossible way sug- 
gested by Mr. Longfellow, licensed poet. No, it is 
simply a book of observations, such as any Connecti- 
cut Yankee might make in King Arthur's and other 
courts, originally written without thought of print- 
er's glory, but as a matter of epistolary interest to 
friends at home. Hence, it contains not so much in- 
formation as observation, ranging over a small field 
of fact and a wide one of comment, taken from the 
point of view of one whose angle of incidents is 
confessedly smaller than his angle of reflection. 

They that go down to the sea in ships generally 
do so at their own risk and equally at their own ex- 
pense. Even Jonah, we learn, " paid the fare there- 
of " without any mention of " clerical discount," 
which is the only thing related to his credit on the 
entire voyage. But the maker of this pilgrimage 
had not even that to his credit! Another hand than 
his signed the warrant, and all he had to do was to 
write on the back of it, after the manner of that 
simple-minded parson in his first banking experi- 
ence, " I heartily endorse this check." His Church 
and Society generously gave him leave of absence, 
and a group of friends supplied " the supply." A 

2 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

telephone was put in and cablegrams were sent out, 
to say nothing of countless messages that reached 
him by wireless telegraphy. A certain friend insured 
his life against accident, all unbeknown to the travel- 
ler, rating his age six years too low, and his weight 
six pounds too high, so that the one error off-set the 
other; and between that policy and Providence, he 
escaped the small-pox, pneumonia, and broken 
bones that carried off fourteen of the party imme- 
diately in advance of his. He was wonderfully fa- 
vored in weather also, so that an umbrella purchased 
in Messina was never raised, another bought in 
Naples was used once, and all this in face of the fact 
that the party joining his at Athens had seventeen 
successive days of rain in " Sunny Italy." Other 
gifts and favors there were, not particularized here, 
but all indelibly printed on the memory. His ca- 
reer abroad was ably administered by The Bureau 
of University Travel, of Ithaca, 1ST. Y., and much 
of his enjoyment, especially in art and history, was 
due to their scholarly and devoted representatives. 

Finally, while it may be seen that the leaves con- 
tributing to this book have been gathered from 
Church Records and traveller's note-books, yet not 
the least contribution to its being was a certain gen- 
erous " leave to print," without which it might 
have been born to blush unseen among the foliage 
of foreign correspondence. 

With this fair understanding had in advance, the 

3 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

reader is invited to follow the narrator in his jour- 
ney, cutting a swath through three continents, four- 
teen thousand miles long, and a foot and a half wide, 
" which is the measure of a man." 



II 

THE LOG 

THE log of this good ship, the St. Louis, flying 
the American flag, begins with clearing the 
dock at 10 A. M. sharp, Wednesday, Feb- 
ruary 21, 1900 A. D., in which function we are as- 
sisted by a large detachment of Greater New York. 
" Eyes, look your last ! Arms, take your last em- 
brace! " That is what the bugle said, and every- 
body not bound for Europe goes down the gang- 
plank. 

" All ready to cast off? " " Aye, aye, sir! " 
" Hold there ! " Here comes the inevitable wo- 
man, with three children in her wake, having big 
box, little box, band-box, and bundle, puffing, pant- 
ing, scurrying aboard — the very last! Then we 
start for England, stern first: swing out into the 
North River, leaving a pier full of people waving 
the white flag of peace. 

Everybody now seeks the steward who sorts the 
mail, for in one hour the pilot will leave the vessel, 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

and with him goes the last chance to acknowledge 
" steamer letters." The G box is full and imme- 
diately he deals me out a full hand. A slip of the 
pen? Not at all, my friend. A " full hand," is as 
old as the hills, forsooth the seven hills of Rome. 
Virgil in his finest passage begins with 

" Manibus date UUaplenis." 

So with a full hand, I repeat, he fills my own. 
There are twenty-two letters, four telegrams, and a 
receipt that calls for a basket of fruit and a box 
of " goodies." My feelings are those of Naomi, who 
said, " I went out full." 

After steamer letters, the next proper thing is to 
scan the passenger list. Byron observed that fame 
consists in getting killed in battle and having your 
name spelled wrong in the newspapers. A part of 
this truth applies to all lists of printed names ; they 
are usually possessed of the printer's devil. It was 
so with this one, and the writer's friends, if they had 
recognized the reference, might have thought that 
he was fleeing the country under an alias. With 
us are numbered a hundred and fifty ground and 
lofty tumblers, rough riders, gymnasts, contortion- 
ists, snake-charmers, and other performers, going 
over to join " The Greatest Show on Earth." These 
are kept in a cage by themselves, and do not eat at 
the first table. But they will not be lonesome. The 

6 



AND OTHEB LEAVES 

Atlantic will develop other tumblers and contor- 
tionists before the voyage is over. 

We steam past the Statue of Liberty, past Sandy 
Hook and Scotland Lightship. Down there to the 
right is the Jersey coast. The historian will tell us 
that the companion to this ship, the St. Paul, once 
tried to run down the coast of New Jersey, being 
nineteen miles out of her reckoning. But New Jer- 
sey always was stubborn, as Lord Howe discovered 
as far back as Washington's time, and inconsider- 
ately refused to get out of the way. So the good 
ship hung on a sand-bar for six days and nights, 
praying for a high tide, and not knowing the while 
whether she was born to be hung or to be drowned. 
But, as on another critical occasion, " the Lord sent 
a strong east wind, all that night," and by means of 
it the big vessel finally backed off into deep water. 
Moral : Beware the bar, whether it be off Barnegat, 
or nigh a Raines hotel. 

And now the pilot clambers down the side of the 
vessel into his little yawl, the last link is broken that 
binds us to America, and we are on the high seas. 

The next morning, the Birthday of the Father of 
his Country, is greeted with a wet sail and a flowing 
sea. Only one man at my table for breakfast, and 
he ate abstemiously. (If I were the Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table, I would remark on that last 
word, as containing all the vowels of the English 

7 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

language, and in their order. Beware of it, not so 
much of the word, as of the idea of the word. Use 
the idea sparingly, and its companion in danger, 
" facetiously.") The deck presents much pictu- 
resque scenery, and all of it entirely visible to the 
naked eye. Good place to study human nature. All 
of a man's characteristics come out at sea, also other 
things. One passenger, a horseman, had drawn a 
position close to the rail. He explained that it was a 
favorite place with jockeys. Another man was dis- 
covered, looking as if he wanted something. Be- 
ing asked what he wanted, he replied, " The earth." 
There was a commercial traveller, too, with a very 
accommodating spirit; he seemed willing to throw 
off ten per cent. The writer of the cvii Psalm 
had been to sea. His language is, " They reel to 
and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are 
at their wits' end." 

But not everybody was at their wits' end. Some 
people had their wits very much about them, and 
made up a pool on the day's run. The greenhorns 
and land lubbers were all " at sea," in their calcu- 
lation, forgetting that the day from noon to noon, 
going easterly, is nearly forty minutes short of 
twenty-four hours, and any calculation based on 
the last westward run of the vessel would be about 
eighty minutes astray. Now the last posted day's 
run of the vessel was in the 470s. So the bidding 
started at 440, and every number from that up to 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

459 was sold. The auctioneer looked hard at the 
writer, when bidding was active, as though I were 
a sporting character, but I fooled him ! I confess to 
many faults, but am not 

One of those who do not know beans, 

And are easily told what they tell the marines. 

There was a shrewd man in the far corner, who 
quietly waited until the money was all in the pool, 
and the choice of " high or low field " was auctioned 
off. He paid high for the choice, £14, and, to 
everybody's surprise, chose " low field." But he 
knew his ground, or rather his water, and, when 
the run turned out to be 436 knots, he took in £26,- 
14s, 6d, and twenty-four passengers besides. 

The next day we ran into a hard easterly blow. 
There is much tintinnabulation of the bell. The 
one case that Edgar Allan Poe did not account for 
in his runic rhyme was that of the stewardess' bell. 
It rings importunately, impatiently, imperiously, 
impiously, and several other ways beginning with 
imp. Under the circumstances, I could but think 
of those feeling lines in Scott, 

woman, in our hours of ease 
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, 
And variable as the shade — 
But man, when he is ill at sea, 
And thou art looking for a fee, 
Can count on thee, my maid. 
9 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

The ship has a fine library, uniformly bound in 
red leather, presented by the citizens of St. Louis. 
It looks paradoxical, however, to see the name of the 
steamer and her address printed on books and life 
boats as " St. Louis, ~N. Y." "We usually write it 
" St. Louis, Mo." A fine pipe-organ is also on 
board, and music is enjoyed every night from nine 
until ten. 

It is noteworthy how much motion there is to so 
large a vessel, whose length is put down at 554 feet. 
They have rigged ropes on the stairways to assist 
people up and down in their zigzag journeys. The 
tables have metal fences to enable passengers " to 
have and to hold " the dishes thereof, while the 
carafle is held in place by a ring and clamp. Sea- 
men distinguish two kinds of motion, the first a 
" teeter board " action, in which the bow and stern 
alternately rise and fall, this is called " pitching." 
The other motion is at cross purposes with the first, 
a pendulum action from side to side, and is called 
" rolling." The former is durable, the latter is un- 
endurable. 

A school of porpoises were seen this morning, 
playing leap-frog with the waves, and apparently 
racing with the boat. They would leap out of the 
water as gracefully as a fawn over a fern, and 
plunge into a breaker, only to leap out of it again 
into the next one. It was a cheerful and exhilarat- 
ing sight, bringing a smile to all the " Palefaces." 

10 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

Divine service was held in the cabin on Sunday. 
The Episcopal prayer-book was used, and service 
was read by a rector from Massachusetts. The 
organ was a great support, and the singing, which 
was hearty, was largely reinforced by a choir of 
table stewards. !No sermon was preached, but all 
seemed to enjoy the worship of God in that unac- 
customed sanctuary. " The sea is His, and He made 
it." 

At last the sun ! The invalids come out of their 
hiding places, thank God, and take courage. 
Sighted the " British King " off the starboard bow, 
though whether it refers to His Majesty William 
IV, deceased, or to Edward VII to be, does not ap- 
pear. Shuffle-board and ring-toss are " on deck," 
literally and figuratively. Mild romances in prog- 
ress also, cases where spectators see most of the 
game. Matches, they say, are made in heaven; 
occasionally also they are made at the level of the 
sea. 

An American manufacturer, from Illinois, fell 
into conversation with me. He stated that he sold 
goods all over Europe and was accustomed to travel 
from Norway to Greece. Contrary to my supposi- 
tion, he claimed that American machinery had a 
solid reputation in Europe for good wearing quality 
and for not easily getting out of order. Asking him 
how it was that we were able to compete with Eu- 
ropean cheap labor, he replied that a German manu- 

11 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

facturer had recently asked him that very question, 
and he had returned the following answer : " It is 
by virtue of machinery that we do it. Your great 
vessel, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, has a capacity 
of 30,000 horse-power. That is, the vessel requires 
the equivalent of a hundred and fifty thousand men 
to run it ten hours, a man's day. It would take 
150,000 more to run it ten hours longer, and 60,000 
more to make up the remaining four hours of the 
twenty-four. Total, 360,000 men to run the 
Kaiser from noon to noon. ]STow your great Ger- 
man army, great it is, could not supply men enough 
to run two such vessels a year. Machinery does it 
readily. Americans lack men, but they more than 
make up for it in machines." Moreover, my friend 
continued to me, " American operatives have what 
I call ' machine sense.' The understanding of ma- 
chinery is second nature to them. A German will 
' man ' a loom with a girl. But in America I have 
seen one girl keep five such machines running, and 
with no more eifort." I thought it a striking fact 
and illustration. 

The last night out we had what the printed pro- 
gramme called A GRAND CONCERT in the 
cabin. (Every steamer now carries a printing 
press.) The programme included organ, cornet, and 
mandolin solos, recitations, songs, and a fancy 
dance by a little miss, who might better have been 

12 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

abed at her tender age. The United States Commis- 
sioner, in charge of the American Exhibit at the 
Paris Exposition, was the Chairman, and made a 
felicitous speech on what he termed " The "World's 
Peace Contest." The concert was in aid of the 
widows and orphans of sailors and disabled seamen. 
It closed with a verse each from " God Save the 
Queen," and " My Country 'tis of Thee." It does 
an American good to hear all those Parthians, 
Medes, Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, who 
have not a drop of New England blood in their 
veins, sing 

" Land where my fathers died, 
Land of the Pilgrims' pride," 

in a roar loud enough to drown the engine ! 

Land ho! Sighted the Scilly Islands at four 
o'clock and threw up our hats! Everybody busy 
now in writing cablegrams, telegrams, letters and 
postals. Money is being changed and baggage is 
being checked. Stewards go about in a receptive 
mood, and the tip comes to the top. From New 
England to Old England is but a span on the map, 
but between the two is a great gulf fixed. May I 
be found in due season on the right side of it ! 



Ill 

THE EAIL 

AFTEE the log the rail; after the cabin the 
cab ; after three thousand miles of sea came 
fifteen hundred of land. To be exact, 
from Southampton, England, to Naples via Lon- 
don, with the exception of twenty-three miles across 
the Channel, stretches an iron " line," (they never 
say track or road over there), of fifteen hundred and 
forty miles. This I did in fifty-two hours of con- 
tinuous travel. Every moment of that journey I 
was in suspense lest I should not catch the steamer 
out of Naples. The steamer, however, was caught 
and four days extra with it. I am reminded of the 
man who came flying down the dock, shouting 
all the way, " Hold on ! " did not wait for the gang 
plank, but cleared the twelve feet of water with a 
spring, saying as he landed on the deck, " Well, I 
made it ! " " Yes, you did make it," said the cap- 
tain; " but this boat is not going out, it is just com- 

14 



AND OTIEE LEAVES 

ing in." It was with a like margin I " made it " at 
Naples. 

On landing at Southampton, we were so glad, 
as the man said, " to get once more on vice versa," 
that we left the vessel with a cheer. Xenophon's 
army shouted, when they sighted the sea, and cried, 
" Thalatta ! thalatta ! " Ours was the same im- 
pulse, only it was the " reverse current." We ran 
the gauntlet of the custom-house, a mere form, and 
were soon among the hills and dales of England. 
"What a well-groomed country it is!" says Dr. 
Holmes in his " Hundred Days." Everything agri- 
cultural is as true and regular as the lines of a fort. 
The furrows look as if they had been run by a theod- 
olite; the hedges are as well clipped as a French- 
man's beard. Every field is as clean of weeds as 
Broadway. The very roads are swept and garnished, 
and " the lion on your old stone gates " looks as if 
he had been wiped daily with a chamois skin. 

It was a brilliant day in London when I passed 
through. The sun actually shone, and everybody 
was in good humor over the news from Africa, for 
Cronje had just surrendered. The Houses of Parlia- 
ment, the Monument, the great hotels and parks, 
all smiled their best. Big Englishmen walked 
along, looking as if they could down the world, all 
brawn, brains, and backbone. The last frequently 
begins where the brains leave off, so that many an 

15 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

Englishman has little or no neck, his coat collar 
making close connection with his hat. 

I crossed " town " as quickly as possible, to catch 
a train out of Charing Cross, and soon we were 
whirling through the green fields of Kent, famous, 
as Mr. Jingle tells us, for " apples, cherries, hops 
and women." It is known, also, as the garden of 
England. Although it is too early for flowers, the 
grain is up and the grass shows finely. Oh those 
English lawns ! " How do you ever produce such 
velvety grass ? " asked an American. " Cut it 
twice a week for three hundred years," was the re- 
ply. At Dover we strike the sea and with it the most 
historic shores of England. It was here that the 
mariner, weedy and long, told the yarn of the Nancy 
Bell. A little to the west of us the battle of Hast- 
ings was fought, and England became ISTorman- 
dized. In this same county Augustin, the monk, 
landed twelve centuries ago, and began the work of 
foreign missions in England, an enterprize that has 
made both England and America the nations they 
are. Hereabouts, too, landed Julius Csesar, six cen- 
turies earlier still, the bold islanders wading out into 
the sea to meet him. 

The English Channel is not wide, it is not deep, 
but it will do. It does do a great many of the nobil- 
ity and gentry of these parts. The Channel is only 
twenty-three miles wide at Dover, and although the 

16 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

monopoly line at this crossing charges three-dollars 
more for the privilege of going the shorter distance, 
they get the bulk of the business. One soon dis- 
covers the reason! Such abject misery as most 
travellers display, for one hour and twenty minutes 
by the clock ! This accounts for the periodic agita- 
tion of the project to tunnel the Channel. It is en- 
tirely feasible, but it has been voted down in Parlia- 
ment, year after year, partly out of vague fear of 
Europe's stealing a submarine march on them some 
night, as Cyrus did on Babylon, and partly out of 
sentiment, lest it vitiate the insularity of the " right 
little, tight little island." Hence, to this day, the 
Englishman crosses the most natively depraved 
waters on the planet in the shakiest of craft, experi- 
encing in its misery and effect upon his spirits, such 
blight as never was on sea or land. 

One knows the difference between Erance and 
England right away. The laborer wears a blouse 
that looks neither male nor female, but as Tarn 
O'Shanter would say, " a cutty sark." They seize 
your luggage vi et armis and refuse to listen to the 
best Connecticut French you have- in stock. But 
I was successful in holding on to my belongings, 
passing the custom officer, tipping the guard, get- 
ting a luncheon, and finding the right place in the 
train, all in forty minutes. It takes eight hours to 
go from London to Paris by the fastest train. In 

17 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

America one can go from ISTew York to Buffalo, 
444 miles, in the same time; but, then, one can cross 
the Hudson Kiver with less trouble than the Eng- 
lish Channel. 

" When a man travels, his trouble begins." It 
begins with the French language. I do not refer, 
of course, to the favored soul who has taken the de- 
gree of A.M. (Accomplished Meanderer), who 
knows all the syntax of Europe and the idioms there- 
of, but to the ordinary two-talent man, who has been 
taught that peculiar brand known as Yale College 
French. To him the French of France is an un- 
known tongue. It is as full of stones as a sheep lot. 
Mr. Stanley was called by the natives, " Bula Ma- 
tari" " Breaker of Stones." It may be that he can 
" on, Stanley, on," through the Congo of the French 
language, but no Yale graduate can do it. His 
primal difficulty is trying to recall, on the spur of 
the moment, " what does the lexicon say about the 
thing? " Does " poser " mean laying an egg, or 
laying a table-cloth, or is it some other kind of poser? 
In the Concord School of Philosophy, a lecturer 
once defined being as " the thingness of the here;" 
the trouble with your French vocabulary, when 
you want it, is that it has no definite being, neither 
thingness of the here nor hereness of the thing. 
There is a strange irrelevance, too, between the form 
your question finally takes and the unexpectedness 

18 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

of the Frenchman's answer; it reminds you of that 
historic interchange of thought, " Do you like 
cheese?" " No, but my brother-in-law plays the Ger- 
man flute." Still there are compensations. As they 
say in Smith College, " It is a poor mule that can 
not kick both ways," and it is consolatory to think 
that they do not understand you any better than you 
do them. 

My stay in Paris this time was confined to one 
hour and thirty-five minutes. I was met at the 
North Station by a friend who conducted me safe- 
ly to the place of departure, through the gayeties and 
pitfalls for youth of this luxurious city. He placed 
me in the Italian Express, and left me to the roulette 
of fortune. Said fortune appointed me to a cab con- 
taining a young Belgian. After a meagre conver- 
sation in broken French, he composed his mind for 
sleep by opening a bulging bottle of Belgic liquor. 
Of this he partook several " fingers " at once, and 
continued the process in blocks of five through the 
night. His suspiration was terrific! It was said 
afterward that this first of March was the coldest 
night of the winter. I can believe it. Nevertheless, 
there was little provision made to expel the winter's 
flaw. There are no stoves or steam-pipes on the Eu- 
ropean car. A semblance of warmth is maintained 
by cans of hot water, which are dragged in with 
a clatter every fifty miles, and banged upon the 

19 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

floor. They look something like a flattened milk 
can, and hold three gallons apiece. At various sta- 
tions one can hire a pillow or a blanket for a franc, 
and these three sustain life, if not sleep and comfort, 
until the journey is over. 

I awoke near the French frontier next morning, 
and found myself among snowy mountains and ice- 
bound lakes. Beauty everywhere ! But it was cold 
as a glacier crevasse. At Modane we crossed the Ital- 
ian frontier and boarded a " restaurant wagon" 
which is French for dining-car. Providence 
brought me vis a vis with a fine old English gentle- 
man, one of the real old school, and I enjoyed him 
more even than the breakfast. He asked me some 
of those delicious questions, that only people in dense 
ignorance of America can ask. I did not tell him 
that we shot bear in the upper end of Manhattan 
Island, nor even that Dr. Parkhurst enjoyed hunt- 
ing " the Tiger " in those preserves. I knew that 
that would stagger him. Nor did I say, as Eugene 
Field on a like occasion, " When I was first caught, 
I was living in a tree." But I did have occasion to 
inform him that American women were usually 
well informed, and could converse understandingly 
even with a British subject. Soon after breakfast 
we entered the Mons Cenis tunnel, or series of tun- 
nels, requiring twenty-two minutes to make the pas- 
sage. We catch glimpses of mountains, glaciers, 

20 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

snow-drifts, waterfalls, valleys, embankments, in 
bewildering confusion, interspersed with blackness 
of darkness, marking the entrance to a tunnel. Then 
we go down, down, down. For the summit of the 
grade is more than five thousand feet above sea 
level. At length we reach the" broad and fertile 
plains of Piedmont, " Foot of the Mountain." Here 
is Turin itself, and now we realize that we are in 
Italy. 

In Italy one meets a new nature. The people 
show their excitability in high-strung voices, in rapid 
speech, in shrugs, grimaces, and gestures. They talk 
so much with their hands, and are so dependent upon 
them, that a hand-cuffed Italian would be dumb. 
They are an emotional race, and the Saxon looks on 
with amazement when he sees two able-bodied men 
kiss each other on the cheek, turning the other also. 
The least incident throws these Latin races into ex- 
citement; important news produces panic; a catas- 
trophe in reality begets spontaneous combustion. If 
you see a throng of people on a street corner, all 
talking at once, and gesticulating violently, you 
need not jump at the conclusion that Italy has lost 
its boot, or that the dome of St. Peter's has fallen in. 
!No, the whole case is that " Jacko, the donkey, has 
eaten up Mother Goose, her cabbage." 

We flitted past Turin, past Genoa, where every 
American takes off his hat; past Pisa, where the 

21 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

towers, like certain Christians, lean " as near to 
earth as they can be without falling;" then we 
passed another purgatorial night, five of us, in a 
space little larger than a dog kennel, " and so we 
went toward Rome." Yet I saw only five minutes 
of Rome on this occasion. It is chiefly connected 
in mind at this writing with a huge sandwich, which 
was the only thing I could buy, on the run between 
train and train, and ate with the relish of a fifteen 
hours' fast in the real Appian way. Every turn of 
the wheel thereafter brought us in view of classic 
places. On yonder road the Apostle Paul trudged 
as prisoner in company with the beloved physician. 
Over there stood the residence of Cicero. In that 
little city set upon a hill were born Juvenal and 
Thomas Aquinas. Every acre of this country has 
been told in verse or painted in color. At half -past 
one we rolled into Naples, and realize that the long, 
hard journey is happily ended. 

On the whole, few Americans enjoy European 
methods of travel. There is no such opportunity 
to move about, visit with friends, open a window, 
procure a drink of water, or get light enough to read 
by, as in the United States. On certain rare occa- 
sions, when one wants privacy, he can secure it more 
easily in Europe, but all of the life, incident, pano- 
rama of the railway car is lost to him. There is no 
opportunity to watch the newly wedded pair, nor to 

22 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

enjoy the usual pastimes of American travel. In- 
stead of which, one has a cooped up, airless, and un- 
comfortable feeling, mingled with the glare of of- 
ficial eyes, suggesting the suspicion that you have 
" done something." Yes, it will do me good to get 
into " the Norfolk car," on the Harlem Railroad, 
some pleasant afternoon, and presently hear the 
cheery call of the conductor, " Tickets, please! " 



IV 
NAPLES 

" £1 -^ Napl es and die," runs the proverb, and 

/^^ here it was before me ! 

*^~s The entrance is not as impressive by land 
as by water, when in the latter case a vision bursts 
upon the traveller, for the sea and mountain are the 
glory of the city. But there is beauty still in abun- 
dance. The famous plain, one of the most fertile 
tracts of land in the known world, is teeming with 
vine and fruit tree, just budding into bloom. The 
city itself is swarming with life. The ordinary Ital- 
ian character, Marion Crawford tells us, is tinged 
with a gentle melancholy. One perceives this in the 
faces of the handsome officers and in the graceful 
lines of many a noble dame. But the Neapolitan is 
lighthearted and gleeful. His street songs are full 
of life and " catchy " to a degree. Among the most 
beautiful of these is the " Santa Lucia." Santa 
Lucia is the Billingsgate of Naples, but all that dirt, 
clamor, fish haggling and breach of the Third Com- 

24 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

mandment is intermingled with the melody of 
Paradise. 

One of the first things that struck me in Naples 
was a box with an angel on it, presented in the name 
of charity. I promptly cashed the request, and the 
black-robed figure promised to burn a candle for me 
at a holy shrine. I trust it was not a case of the light 
that failed. I had not gone far before I was honored 
with another request, and with several more before 
reaching the hotel. In fact, I here learned my first 
lesson in Eastern importunity, which increases tow- 
ard the sun rising, according to the square of the 
distance. It is performed with the energy of Scipio 
and the perseverance of Bruce. Akin to these re- 
quests, are the numerous invitations to ride ex- 
tended by the cabmen, who lie in wait for the stroll- 
ing visitor. They call out incessantly, often at the 
distance of a block, " Reet! Reet! " By this they 
seem to mean "Ride! Ride!" and flatter them- 
selves, just as we do in attempting Italian, that our 
accent and pronunciation are irreproachable. One 
of them persistently followed me for blocks, in spite 
of my remonstrance, until at length he rode off in 
dudgeon, expressing the pious hope, " May the devil 
fly away with you ! " 

The beauty of Naples is mainly in its situation. 
It is a case where God made the country ; man made 
the town. The old town, not the new, is moth- 

25 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

eaten, rusty, faded and crumbling. It calls for soap. 
It is all out of paint and putty. The streets need 
the man with a hoe ; the walls need the man with a 
white-wash brush. The city is splendidly supplied 
with water, and commands at all times such a view 
from its curving shore as comes but once this side 
of the crystal sea. Old Vesuvius gives a tragic cast 
to the city, its cloud of smoke, like the skeleton at 
Roman feasts, being a perpetual memento mori. 
The people of Naples are born gamblers; everywhere 
the sign of the lottery is visible, and tickets can be 
procured at as low as two cents. The government 
manages the scheme, and it is conducted fairly. 
Perhaps we ought not to cast stones too severely at 
this evil, for Connecticut builded her Groton Monu- 
ment by aid of a State lottery, and South Canaan 
Meeting House, among others, was erected by means 
of the same. The fathers eased their conscience in 
those " good old days " by quoting Solomon, " The 
lot is cast into the lap ; but the whole disposing there- 
of is of the Lord." So the lottery continues to 
entrap the gay Neapolitans, while the government 
knows not how to forego the revenue thus raised. 
The shops of Naples atone for the dilapidation of the 
streets. They are full of attractive things, tempt- 
ingly displayed in windows, which open upon the 
sidewalk. It is an ideal place for purchasing Santa 
Claus gifts. Naples has a reputation also for her 

26 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

sweets, of which Neapolitan ice cream is but a sam- 
ple. One rarely sees, even in Paris, such artisti- 
cally delicious and bewilderingly fascinating cakes, 
jellies, fruits and candies. " 'Twould tempt the 
dying anchorite to eat! " A walk through her thor- 
oughfares imposes a severe strain upon the Tenth 
Commandment. 

It was in Naples that I made my first try in photog- 
raphy. The initial attempt was signalized by neg- 
lecting to turn off the shutter. Ministers are said to 
have a weakness that way, that is, in not readily 
turning off the shutter. Still, " Success does not 
consist in making no mistakes," says Mr. Billings, 
" but in not making the same mistake twice." 
Thereafter I did better and " snapped " many an in- 
teresting scene and person. In Santa Lucia I hired 
the privilege of taking an old woman with babe 
in arms for three cents. But the terms of the con- 
tract leaked out, whereupon they swarmed upon me 
from all quarters, offering job lots in babes, old 
women, cripples, plain and fancy, at three cents, 
two cents, one cent, two for a cent — the market was 
soon glutted. 

It was here, also, I fell in with a choice party of 
travellers from Boston, under escort of a Yale pro- 
fessor. " "We pine for kindred natures to mingle 
with our own." But we never pine so much for this 
compound as when we are admiring something 

27 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

alone. Once I broke over an impassible barrier and 
addressed an Englishman without introduction; it 
was at Dresden, in the little room of the Sistine Ma- 
donna, the occasion being my absolute need of speak- 
ing to somebody as an outlet to pent-up feelings. 
But it was not a success ! An Englishman's house is 
his castle, so is his reserve. However, now that I am 
on the subject, I wish to bear willing testimony to 
the fact that on this tour a marked change appeared 
in the bearing of the English traveller. He ap- 
peared far more affable and spontaneous than ever 
before. Others remarked this fact, and called my 
attention to it. It is partly due to the increased re- 
spect and good-will felt toward Americans, and part- 
ly to the great increase of travel brought about by 
Thomas Cook & Son, which has continentalized 
their insularity. To return to my companions, it 
was a rare pleasure to meet such a group and ac- 
company them, as I did, to Cairo. 

Two of us organized an expedition to Pompeii. 
One remarks, on arrival, the strange proximity of 
the railroad and the buried civilization, contrasts 
separated by eighteen centuries now brought to- 
gether. The catastrophe occurred on the 24th of 
August, A.D. 79. It was probably attended with 
no great loss of life, as the first shower of ashes was 
but three feet deep. After an interval utilized in 
general escape, came a second shower of molten peb- 

28 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

bles, " hail-stones and coals of fire." Few skeletons 
have been found, and few articles of value, indicat- 
ing time for removal. Here and there the bread is 
in the oven, the trussed fowls are on the gridiron. 
The streets have deep ruts cut by chariot wheels. 
The shops have their signs still visible. The fres- 
coed walls still bear testimony against a deadened 
sense of shame. They were evidently an out-of-door 
people, spending much time at the forum, theatre, 
and bath, not holding the Saxon belief, " there's no 
place like home." The dwellings are small and un- 
comfortable, according to our ideas; though, as in 
the house of Pansa (which one may see reproduced 
at Saratoga), there is great wealth and beauty. 
Wendell Phillips on " The Lost Arts," is eloquent 
and captivating. Gibbon's dictum that the time 
when this city was destroyed was, on the whole, the 
golden age of the race, is worthy of attention; but, 
for my part, the civilization and life of Pompeii offer 
little attraction. " Say not thou, what is the cause 
that the former days were better than these? for 
thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this." 
Pompeii is of great interest to the antiquarian, and 
brings back the past vividly, but every traveller is 
glad at heart to ride back to his comfortable hotel, 
face a Neapolitan table d'hote and leave Pompeian 
arts and luxuries behind him. 



29 



THE MEDITERRANEAN 

WE sailed out of the incomparably beauti- 
ful bay of Naples, late in the afternoon, 
on the Italian ship " Indiyendente." 
Naples, more than New Orleans, is the Crescent 
City. Its arms encircle that lovely bay for miles. 
A commanding fortress crowns the height back of 
the city, and old Vesuvius, perpetually puffing his 
pipe, stands guard like a sentinel. Clouds added 
purple and gold to the scene, " and there is that 
great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things in- 
numerable," lights and shadows creeping over its 
surface, little boats of singing sailors creeping at 
night-fall to port. We drank it all in and were 
thankful. 

All that night we steamed down the western coast 
in a calm sea. We rose in comfortable time to see 
the vessel pass through the famous straits of Scylla 
and Charybdis. If Italy be considered a boot, then 
Sicily may stand for the football, both caught in the 

30 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

act of making a goal from field. The narrow space 
between them makes the strait, illustrative of the 
difficulty, ancient and modern, of avoiding error on 
either side. The strait is full of tidal currents and 
whirlpools. In one of these the youth plunged for 
King Ferdinand's cup, and afterwards (once too 
often, alas!) for the princess' ring, as sung by 
Schiller in his ballad of " The Diver." 

Messina, the chief of port of Sicily, is not far 
from the entrance to the strait, situate on an arm 
of land shaped like Cape Cod and known as " The 
Sickel." But the citizens are quite different from 
" Cape Cod Folks; " yes, teetotally so. Soap is dear 
apparently, in Messina, and in lieu of sand and 
gravel, they throw garbage upon the streets. The 
Selectmen say it comes cheaper, and enables them 
to run the town on a twelve mill tax. This is a great 
port for oranges, and the golden spheres are every- 
where. There are oranges by the box, the hogshead 
and the thousand. After exhausting the narrow 
and gloomy streets, I climbed the hill and found 
myself " f orninst " a certain villa surrounded by a 
high wall. A slip of a girl ran out of an alley and 
inquired something of me in an unknown tongue. 
Risking the chances against its being a proposal of 
marriage, I nodded " Yes." Whereupon she led 
me to a gate, and promptly held out her hand in 
true Italian style. I crossed her palm with a soldo 

31 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

and was ushered into a delightful old garden. An- 
other demoiselle came out with her knitting and 
showed me over the place; it was a bower of roses, 
an Arabia Felix of orange trees, and a Delectable 
Mountain of heavenly views. The city lay at our 
feet, the straits could be viewed through their entire 
length, the mountains of Calabria lay in front of us, 
and Sicily back of us, a wonderful and glorious 
scene. The maid loaded me with flowers and oranges 
and took the nickel coins I gave her with a proper 
courtesy. Then I was ferried back to the anchored 
ship, and became the object of envy to the entire 
cabin. 

We steamed out of the harbor that afternoon still 
going toward the south. Our course traversed the 
waters sailed over by the Apostle Paul in his jour- 
ney to Rome. Five miles from Messina we came 
to Rhegium, a port touched by his vessel after they 
had " fetched a compass from Syracuse." I took a 
snap-shot at this for St. Paul's sake. A few miles 
further on we came abreast of the toe of Italy's boot, 
a kind of Land's End, and I trained the camera on 
that also. We had been discussing the possibility 
of seeing old JEtna, which Hartford people would 
tell you was named after an insurance company in 
that city, the loftiest volcano in Europe, exceeding 
ten thousand feet, and one of the sights of the Medi- 
terranean. But, to our great disappointment, the 

32 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

air was hazy. iEtna was thirty miles away and an 
object only ten miles distant was scarcely visible. 
Many glasses were turned longingly in that direc- 
tion, but, as if to intensify the difficulty, a long 
stratum of cloud hid the horizon. "We were about 
leaving it in despair, when the cry was raised, " Look 
above the clouds! " And there, indeed, was the 
great mountain, towering over earth, sea and cloud, 
its snowy cone protruding majestically into the 
blue. It was a wonderful and rapturous surprise. 
In that same hour we learned a lesson. The Moun- 
tain was a schoolmaster to bring us to truth, the 
truth that the grandest things in life are often 
missed, because we look too low for them. 

The sail up the Mediterranean can be, on occa- 
sion, one of the rarest of pleasures; but, as the sweet- 
est things in life, when sour, become the sourest, 
so it is on this Middle-of-the-Earth Sea. I am now 
fully satisfied that the Mediterranean need not take 
back water in presence of any seas that be, in point 
of nausea-ability. Neptune seems to have sum- 
moned every one of his sea-dogs and cried " Sick 
'em! " Our company has completely collapsed. I 
am almost ashamed to be so well myself, the feeling 
perhaps that a wooden-legged man might experi- 
ence, if every other person in his company were 
suffering from corns. Our steamer has something 
to answer for in this instance. Sea-sickness is what 

33 



A LEAVE OE ABSENCE 

it is the world over, but the same on an Italian line 
can only be expressed in italics. This line was origi- 
nally known as the " Elorio and Bubbatino," but 
I hazard the conjecture that it sounded so much like 
" Floor-I-you and Bub-it-in-o " that they changed 
it to the " Navigazione Generate Italiana" which 
is more non-committal. Another feature of our 
voyage was the wind, which blew with a persistency 
that made us think of Jonah's and St. Paul's gales 
in these same waters. It was off the coast of Crete, 
which we could dimly see, that this Levanter struck 
us. St. Luke describes the same wind as coming 
down from Crete. The old version called it Euroc- 
lydon, the new calls it Euraquilo, our cabin called 
it a worse name than either. The explanation com- 
monly given is that the cold air of the mountains 
makes a vis a tergo in the rear and the hot sands 
of Africa make a vacuum in front, of which the E. 
1ST. E. wind is not slow to avail itself. We learned 
also, why the writer of the " log " in Acts xxvii 
called the same wind " tuphonikos" typhoon-like. 
We were in the deepest part of the Mediterranean, 
and had plenty of water to drown in, say twelve 
thousand feet; one of the younger members felt sure 
we would take advantage of it. So the days dragged 
on wearily for the sick, times that tried men's souls, 
likewise their digestive apparatus. The voyage led 
some even to describe it in the same terms as the lad 

34 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

did the sermon, " The beginning was pretty good, 
and so was the end, but it had too much middle." 
We tried to organize a daily religious service in the 
cabin, but were able to hold two only. The other 
days no one could navigate in safety from one part 
of the vessel to another. I suppose that this stormi- 
ness was exceptional, for often the Mediterranean 
is a Lake Placid, its shores sapphire, its waters 
" darkly, deeply, beautifully blue." But the ex- 
perience had its lesson; it put us in touch with the 
great apostle, and gave a vivid significance to the 
xxviith of Acts, said to be the most dramatic 
chapter in the Scripture. 

On Sunday afternoon we sighted the pharos, or 
lighthouse, of Alexandria, and all at once we realize 
that we are in the old world, back in the Old Testa- 
ment, on the other side of the flood. 



VI 
EGYPT 

EGYPT is the land of mystery. Her appro- 
priate emblem is the Sphinx, looking out 
upon the illimitable, asking questions that 
no man can answer. The very origin of the land 
is mysterious, a ribbon of verdure delimited by sand, 
a " palm-girt path of civilization walled in by two 
deserts." 

Egypt is the gift of the Nile, it is all " made " 
land, as much so as the Back Bay of Boston. The 
annual overflow of the great river and its sources have 
furnished science with problems and bones of con- 
tention for ages. Not until our own generation has 
" The Battle of the Nile " over its own head-waters 
been decided. But the river is only the beginning 
of her mystery. There remain the pyramids, which 
after all these centuries continue to be classed 
among the Seven Wonders of the World. There 
are 

Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous, 
Of which the very ruins are tremendous. 

36 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

It is the land of the mummy, " the leathern Pha- 
raoh grinning in the dark." It is the land of the 
triangle, beginning with the delta and ending with 
the apex of the pyramid. And all this mysterious- 
ness is appropriately encompassed by the desert, 
silent, sombre, soulless, a " No Man's Land," the 
home of mirage. 

Accordingly, one enters Egypt on the tip-toe of 
expectancy, and with a delightful sense of being 
let into a secret. It was at Alexandria that the light 
was first turned upon "Egyptian darkness." As soon 
as we entered the harbor, we were surrounded by a 
howling mob of boatmen, porters, " baggage 
smashers," and officials. They swarmed like cats, 
monkeys, locusts, up the side of the vessel, seized 
everything that could be handled, each claiming 
to be " the only, original Jacobs," the one man in 
port capable of putting us properly ashore. Our 
conductor at once engaged one man for the entire 
contract, and the latter rose to the occasion. He 
promptly laid about him with a rope, and succeeded, 
after gigantic effort, colossal profanity, and Sabbath- 
breaking extraordinary, in getting us and our be- 
longings into our boats. The custom-house officer 
was a woman, who took our word for it that we had 
nothing dutiable, and promptly chalked every 
piece with an " M," which, after our superfluous 
trouble in getting there, was conjectured to stand 

37 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

for " Much ado about nothing." It was then a 
joyous experience for all those storm-tossed pas- 
sengers to drive to the Khedival Hotel, and lie 
down on a still and level surface. It was, " resting 
weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel." 

Alexandria is a city with a past. Here fled many 
of the Jews after the destruction of Solomon's Tem- 
ple, until they were estimated by Philo in his day 
at one million; here the Old Testament was trans- 
lated into Greek, forming the version that was 
chiefly used by the Apostles and generally quoted 
in the New Testament. Great schools of learning 
flourished here, and the finest library of antiquity 
was gathered, only to suffer the fate of burning by 
order of Omar, an irreparable loss to scholarship. 
The fire of Alexandria always brings a chill to the 
heart of scholars. Here Cleopatra held her court 
and entertained Caesar; as one has felicitously put 
it, " The Enchantress of the Nile captured the heart 
of the Conqueror of the world." It was probably 
a good place for ministers, too, along with other 
notabilia, for Apollos was reared here, described by 
his friend St. Luke as " an eloquent man and 
mighty in the Scriptures." On this account I drank 
in all the air I could, in hope of its being a homileti- 
cal tonic. It is a flat, unpromising enough city in 
these days, with " Ichabod " written over every part 
of it. It has been so burned, bombarded, bullied 

38 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

and buncoed that Alexander redivivus would be 
liable to say to it now, as he did to the cowardly sol- 
dier who bore his name, " Either change your name 
or change your nature." However, it is still a port 
of importance (no levity intended), and Egypt 
could not do business without it. 

In Alexandria I saw my first camel, that ship of 
the desert, that companion of the Arab, that bunchy, 
patchy, untidy creature, looking so picturesque in 
the chromo and so gawkyesque in the open air. He 
is patient, imperious, disdainful, self-centred. 
When his rations give out, it is said that he lives 
upon his own hillock of flesh; hence they say in the 
House of Eli Yale, when a man develops unsus- 
pected energy, " He humps himself." He is uglier 
than Thersites, " the ugliest man who came to 
Troy;" the which he does not mind in the least. 
His gait is such, that the Arabs have a proverb, 
" There are fourteen different ways of being un- 
comfortable on top of a camel." I tried several of 
them myself before leaving the country. But we 
did not tarry long in Alexandria, the treasures of 
Egypt are higher up the river. 

The next morning we steamed out of the city for 
Cairo. The road crosses the delta of the Nile, 
which has been compared to an open fan; at one 
corner Alexandria, while Cairo is the jewel set in 
the handle. Everything is green, and farming is 

39 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

well advanced. The annual rise lias not begun, but 
preparations are being made for its arrival. The 
fields are full of men, women, and children, with 
camels, donkeys, buffalo-looking oxen and cows that 
remind one of Pharaoh's kine, " very ill-favored 
and lean-fleshed." Their milking capacity I esti- 
mated at one pint to the herd. The houses were not 
very attractive, by reason of the thatched roofs, 
giving them a shock-headed appearance, not unlike 
a foot-ball player's dome of thought at the end of 
the first half. Here are the water-wheels turned by 
the " fellaheen," or sons of the soil. ' The latter 
are said to chant a monotonous song, 

They beat us, they beat us ; 
They starve us, they starve us ; 
But there's some One above 
Who will punish them well, 
Who will punish them well. 

This, however, is the song of the past. The con- 
dition of all Egyptian people is much ameliorated 
of late years. 

Our railroad ran down beside one of the principal 
mouths of the Nile. There are two of them, bear- 
ing the pretty names of Rosetta and Damietta. We 
crossed each of them and thus made acquaintance 
with the great Father of Rivers. It is an impressive 
stream. It has ever exerted a strange spell upon 
the nations. The great length alone, four thousand 

40 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

miles, would rank it among the three mighties of 
water highways. Upon it has floated the cradle of 
Moses and the barge of Cleopatra. A fellow travel- 
er from Massachusetts put in my hands that day a 
volume, pointed to a paragraph and said, " That 
page alone is worth the price of the book." The 
gist of the paragraph was that the civilization of 
Egypt, which early made her the advance guard of 
the world, was drawn, like Moses himself, from the 
great river. The need of controlling its course and 
directing its current, it stated, taught them the 
science of land surveying and of hydraulics. The 
annual overflow obliterating all landmarks, led to 
the registering of lands and to teaching the sacred- 
ness of property. Disputes arising, led to the estab- 
lishment of settled laws and the enforcement of 
judical decisions. The river is thus responsible for 
the foundation of social, legal, and political order. 
The Nile was to Egypt not alone the Father of 
Rivers, but the Mother of Arts. One sees the Nile 
to advantage from Cairo upward, a voyage that 
many take with picturesque delight. At my arrival 
the river was lower than usual, and many a boat 
up the river had been tied to the bank, waiting for 
the moving of the waters. 



VII 
CAIKO 

CAIEO ! That weird and fascinating city, the 
meeting point of two civilizations, two con- 
tinents, two ages. The camel and the trol- 
ley in the same street! Ibrahim the sheikh and 
Jones the drummer cheek by jowl (1ST. B. In the 
above antithesis Ibrahim represents " by jowl.") 
At the grand hotels are throngs of Europeans in 
evening dress : out in the street other throngs dressed 
like the prodigal son. It is " show " enough to war- 
rant an admission fee, just to sit on Shepherd's bal- 
cony and look out upon the street below. Such a 
moving panorama of all nations, such a kaleidoscope 
of five continents, such a Babel of all languages! 
You rub your eyes to make sure you are not dream- 
ing, rub your ears to make certain of your hearing, 
rub some other spot to make sure of catching the 
wicked flea, which was just previously tangential 
to your surface. The latter is one of the institu- 
tions of the country, to be reckoned with in all itin- 

42 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

eraries through the East, not lightly and unadvised- 
ly to be dismissed with a wave of the hand. He is 
like Mr. Quilp's dog, " he lives on the right side of 
the street, but generally lurks upon the left." He 
is afraid of nothing and nobody. Like the war horse 
in Job, " He goeth on to meet the armed men; he 
mocketh at fear and is not affrighted." He scorn- 
eth the clenched fist, and at pennyroyal he " chor- 
tles in his joy." Everybody tries to look uncon- 
cerned in his presence, but few are able to keep the 
mask on for long. I was once treating my left side 
with furtive attrition, when a lady said to me with 
empressement, " I deeply sympathize! " It is said 
that one of Professor Maspero's slabs contains this 
inscription, deciphered by the Academy, 

" A querulous old hippopotamus 
Once to Nature made this plea, 
Why don't you copper-bottom us, 
Or kill the elusive flea?" 

This is no fancy sketch. The flea is not a subject 
that can be skipped. It is one of the ten plagues of 
Egypt that live on to afflict our missionaries. Every 
one of them will tell you that it is part of their 
cross, which has to be endured, though never to be 
reconciled unto. 

One of the first sights of Cairo is the Ghizeh 
Museum. It is full of mummies and tablets from 

43 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

three to six thousand years old. One sees all the 
domestic life of the age of Moses, and " all the 
learning of the Egyptians," in which he was in- 
structed, completely set forth. There are the pots 
and kettles, the needles and hair-pins of Uarda and 
other ancient females. He sees what Isaiah enu- 
merates in the third chapter as " the bravery of 
their tinkling ornaments, their round tires like the 
moon, the tablets, and nose jewels, the wimples and 
the crisping pins." I had always wondered how 
the prophet came to be so conversant with the treas- 
ures of the toilet, but I now conjecture that he had 
simply looked over and listed some such cabinet as 
this. The scarabseus is greatly in evidence also in 
this collection. He is carved in stone, cut in cameo, 
sunk in a die, and withal is as multitudinous as he 
is ubiquitous. This beetle was anciently supposed 
to be capable of perpetuating himself, hence was 
chosen as the emblem of immortality. According- 
ly the Egyptian lived with the scarab to the end 
of life and in death they were not divided. They 
share the same tomb unto this day. The mummy 
is always an interesting and impressive object. He 
illustrates the fundamental principle of Egyptian 
philosophy. All their lives long they were prepar- 
ing to die. As Emerson says, " Their priesthood 
was a senate of undertakers; every rich man was a 
pyramidaire." To be well buried was more im- 

44 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

portant in their eyes than to be well born. He re- 
garded his tomb as his real home, and his dwelling 
house as an inn on the way to it. The art of em- 
balming was carried to perfection in public institu- 
tions. But this did not prevent mistake then, any 
more than book-keeping does now. Occasionally 
they got the wrong tag on in the works, and sent 
home a female subject instead of a male. The 
mummy did not care, nor would it ever have been 
known on earth, if some modern professor had not 
discovered it. That is the weak spot in antiquarian- 
ism, it is always unearthing some shady secret that 
had much better stay buried. I once asked a gen- 
tleman, who had spent several hours over our church 
records, whether he had discovered anything of 
value concerning his ancestry. He replied, " Yes; 
I have found that one of them had been excommu- 
nicated for hard drinking, and another for profane 
swearing." 

It brings a very strange feeling over one to look 
upon the features of those who have been entombed 
for millenniums. 

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed, 
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled, 

For thou wert dead and buried and embalmed, 
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled. 

Exceedingly striking was the face and figure of 

45 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

Rameses II, father of the Princess who drew Moses 
from the water. 

My party having great faith in a Yale education, 
requested me to translate some of the hieroglyphic 
inscriptions. Realizing that the reputation of the 
University was at stake, I complied with the request. 
The passage selected consisted of these figures cut in 
red granite. 





6 



{ umn\ 



It was clear to my mind that the above was part 
of a love-letter, addressed to the patron princess of 
Moses by an up-the-river prince, and meant : 

"O Bird of Paradise! 
I lie at thy feet like a dog. 
Give me, 1 pray, thy royal heart, 
And accept the gift of this golden comb." 

This may not have been satisfactory to the 
princess, but it was perfectly so to the ladies of our 
party. 

46 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

A visit to the bazaars is also one of the features 
of Cairo. They are concentrated in certain narrow 
lanes and courts around Mooski Street. By narrow 
I mean five to seven feet wide. The shops are 
about as big as a sentry box, the merchant being 
squatted in front, on the look out for his prey. They 
are as hungry as wolves in Russia, and as persistent 
as the spider of Bruce. No traveller can resist the 
attraction of their wares, and, in spite of all previous 
experience in their over-reaching grasp, returns like 
the moth to the candle. The tour of the bazaars is 
usually made on donkey-back. There are fifty 
thousand of these little quadrupeds in Cairo and all 
of them " sporty." They are controlled by a don- 
key drivers' trust, a species of lads who are sharper 
than a Bowery boy and more philosophical than the 
gamin Gavroche. One of them took my measure 
at a glance, introducing himself as Mehemet Ali 
and his donkey, " the finest in Cairo," as " Yankee 
Doodoo." I expressed some misgivings lest an 
American and that beast of burden might experi- 
ence stars and stripes between us, but he allayed my 
fears, induced me to mount, and forthwith drove 
the steed at a breakneck pace through the crowded 
quarters. I thought of my friend, a Presbyterian 
divine, who had been elected to fracture his collar 
bone donkey-wise, that very month of grace. I 
thought of an obituary I once read, " He met his 

47 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

death at the hands of a horse." Also I thought of 
that Irish paragraph on a similar occasion, " He 
broke his neck, but otherwise sustained no injury." 
However, we were in for it, and I proposed to im- 
prove the shining hour. O but once we were off, 
it was a phantasmagoria of delight! Such crowded 
lanes and crooked alleys! Such bewildering places 
and motley folk! Such cries, imprecations, impor- 
tunities and compulsions to come in! There was 
other excitement, too. Yankee Doodoo would dash 
into a seething mass of humanity, while I held my 
breath in expectation of colliding with some stately 
son of Abraham, and of instantly horizontalizing 
his perpendicularity. But just at the critical mo- 
ment he managed to miss him by a hair, and my 
heart went back from my throat to its proper lati- 
tude and longitude. Here one sees the artizans ex- 
ercising their trades in the little shops with rarest 
skill, despising all the inventions and labor-saving 
devices of to-day. For example, I saw men pulver- 
izing spices, not with a New England mill, but with 
a stone pestle heavy as a hickory log and in a stone 
mortar big as a chopping block. 

"What have I not seen to-day? The prison where, 
they allege, Joseph was confined, a square well of 
a place, looking like the bottomless pit, great grooves 
in the stone coping, where the ropes for letting 
down prisoners and provisions had worn. I saw the 

48 



AND OTHEE LEAVES 

lane where the Mamelukes were massacred. Mame- 
lukes mean " White Slaves," and were originally 
Circassian followers of the Caliphs, or " successors " 
of the Prophet. Their massacre was ordered in 
1811 by Mehemet Ali, who invited them treach- 
erously to a feast, and then had his minions set upon 
them in their trap. One only escaped, by leaping 
his horse over the parapet, a fearful leap, recalling 
the escape of Israel Putnam down Horse-Neck Hill. 
I saw the wonderful view of the City from its Cita- 
del with its eight hundred mosques sending their 
minarets into the sky. I visited the mosque where 
thousands of young Mohammedans from all parts of 
the world are gathered to learn the " sum of human 
wisdom," the Koran; all studying aloud at once in 
groups of two to thirty, in ages from seven to forty, 
seated upon the ground, swaying back and forth to 
cudgel the memory, or beating the palm upon the 
breast, cramming the mind with wholesale doses of 
the one book, exercising no powers of reflection, 
comparison or deduction, " ever learning, but never 
coming to a knowledge of the Truth." I saw the 
men at prayer and I confess to at least one feeling 
of admiration for these followers of Islam. It is 
because they are not ashamed of their religion, 
make no pretence of putting it out of sight. If 
" open confession is good for xhe soul," then they 
have that much to their credit. I saw Bulaq, the 

49 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

ancient port, with its strange shops and equally 
strange shopping ways. I saw funerals pass with 
the hired wailers in tow, as also the Koran chanters 
and the extollers of the virtues of the deceased; with 
them also the crowd of curiosity mongers and small 
boys eager to " see the show." I saw also the newer 
City which His Majesty, the Khedive, is slowly 
building up. He is an up-to-date admirer of the 
fine arts, and proposes to Parisianize his capital, if 
he can. He built an opera house some years ago, 
and engaged Yerdi to compose and set upon the 
stage an opera, based on the ancient glories of his 
realm. The result was Aida, and the occasion 
marked one of the events of the musical world. I 
saw his famous runners that precede his carriage, 
bright colored in silken ribbons, each of them an 
Asahel " as light of foot as a wild roe." I saw also 
the advent of summer luxuries, to wit, strawberries 
and mosquitoes. The latter require no acquain- 
tance with the Arabic tongue in order to be under- 
stood. Their voice is the voice of Egypt, but their 
sting is the sting of New Jersey. I saw also the 
Hon. Consul General for America and procured 
from him a passport, accurately describing my per- 
sonal appearance; and once more I took oath upon 
the Bible to support the United States Constitution, 
for which privilege I paid the paltry sum of $3.77^, 
and thought it cheap enough. 

50 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

The most remarkable sight in Cairo is that of the 
pyramids. They lie just out of the City, at the end 
of a long and picturesque road, skirted by handsome 
trees. We drove by carriage; but think of it, one 
can go by trolley car ! The pyramids are not as im- 
pressive at first glance as expected, producing the 
same effect as the first sight of St. Peter's in Rome, 
and for the same reason. The proportions are so fine 
that the sense of size is lost. But they grow upon you. 
As one looks up that vast stairway, higher than 
most cathedral towers, counts the steps, and gauges 
the masonry of a single course, he is prepared to be- 
lieve that the largest one consumed the labor of a 
hundred thousand men for twenty years. Here are 
thirteen acres of solid masonry uprising to a vanish- 
ing point, and containing material enough to build 
a wall ten feet in height around all of France. They 
have been broken into for plunder, been despoiled 
for buildings in Cairo, but they still lift their grand 
triangles toward the stars. We ate our luncheon at 
the base of the largest, called the Pyramid of 
Cheops, and felt apologetic. 

How insignificant are men in presence of these 
hoary sentinels! We thought of Napoleon, who 
exhorted his troops on yonder plain, that forty cen- 
turies looked down upon them. We thought of 
Moses as standing where we stood, looking out upon 
the same desert, and afterward writing, " For a 

51 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday 
when it is past." 

"We went to the Sphinx near by, and looked upon 
those calm Egyptian features. Was it the Sphinx 
St. John had in mind, when he wrote, " And the 
third beast had a face as a man? " It is a serene, 
unvexed, incommunicative face. It smiles win- 
ningly as if implying that the secret of life, what- 
ever it is, does not end in tombs and wildernesses. 
I thought of Merson, who pictured the Virgin in 
the arms of the Sphinx, the Christ in the arms of 
both; as though finding the world's problem in the 
face of the one, Heaven's answer in the face of the 
Other. 

Then we came back again, dogged by a horde of 
Arabs, who make of these mysteries their market 
place. We must ride the camel, must mount the 
pyramid, must barter for relics. They swore to 
each other's lies, " stood in " with each other on the 
same fake, conspired in the same ring for gulling 
us with the same tale, and all the while we knew 
that their arts were mere " springes to catch wood- 
cock." One Arab did his best to induce me to wager 
a coin as to the time it would take him to mount 
the summit. I told him that he was a fraud and 
that I was no bettor. This retort was lost upon his 
pagan mind. Then he claimed to have been the 
original man that escorted Mark Twain to the top. 

52 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

This, however, was immediately disputed by other 
liars and fabricators, under cover of which colloquy 
I escaped. 

What is the meaning of the pyramid? Who can 
pluck out the heart of its mystery? Some regard 
them as astronomical apparatus, as evidenced by 
their exact orientation, and by the interior gallery 
pointing like a telescope toward the .North Star. Dr. 
Piazzi Smyth would have us regard them as temples 
of prophecy, and constructs a wondrous scheme of 
human destiny from their labyrinthine interior. 
But modern scholarship regards them as resurrec- 
tion chambers, as tombs built to guard sacred dust 
from the overflow of the Nile, as well as from the 
obliteration by sand. This last factor accounts for 
their mathematical form. They are each the local 
habitation of some kingly form, and with the local 
habitation bear a name. The greatest one is called 
" The glorious;" another, " The firm and beauti- 
ful;" a third has the inviting name, "The cool;" 
while the most Easter-like of all is called " The 
rising soul." Probably all of them are more the 
monuments of royal pride than piety, even as one of 
this same kingly race inscribed his epitaph, 

" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, 
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." 

After all, the question will occur to the traveller, 

53 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

"Was it worth, while? Does not a single great rail- 
way or a city library add more to the sum of human 
happiness than a pyramid ? Here are massed giant 
constructions, one of the Seven "Wonders of the 
World, from Herodotus' day until ours. But 
wonder is not the greatest feeling of the heart, 
though Wordsworth wrote, " We live by ad- 
miration." Wonder is not placed by the inspired 
Apostle in the 13th of First Corinthians, among 
the three mighties of the soul. " All the world 
wondered after the beast," we are told; but it would 
be an inadequate and inferior statement to chroni- 
cle, if it were true, " All the world wondered after 
God." The Divine merits and invites from human 
hearts a greater homage than that. The wonder of 
the world may be a pyramid; the greatest thing in 
the world is love. 

GETTING OUT OF EGYPT 

I left Egypt, even as the Children of Israel be- 
fore me, hurriedly. My bread was yet in the knead- 
ing trough, or more literally, my clothing was yet 
in the grasp of the laundry, when it became neces- 
sary to move on. The Egyptians did not press their 
ear-rings and other treasures upon me, but showed 
a robust solicitude for mine. " Bucksheesh " is the 
key that unlocks everything in the East. By it you 
get into temples, mosques, museums, gardens, pris- 

54 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

cms, palaces and favors of every kind. By it you 
get out of scrapes, out of quarantine, out of your 
just deserts, out of purgatory even, for the system 
has been extended by thoughtful minds into the 
next world. Nobody is too high or too low for 
bucksheesh. It affects " the mighty man, and the 
man of war, the judge and the prophet, and the pru- 
dent, and the ancient, the captain of fifty." No 
man is too pompous or too pious to refuse it. Some 
people make it the first rule of oriental travel, 
" When in doubt, tip." It need not be in gold, not 
always in silver, but it is cheaper to do it in any 
coin than to do without it. The traveller has his 
misgivings, his grumblings, his shamefacedness, 
but he always ends by taking out his purse and per- 
forming an example in subtraction. So I carried 
at all times a plentiful supply of copper and nickel 
coins; it " made the wheels go round." 

A vast crowd had assembled at the station, which 
was augmented by similar crowds at every succeed- 
ing station. For many a Gamaliel ben Hassan was 
departing for Mecca, and all of his kinsmen and the 
rest of the 8th Ward came down to see him off. 
The railway was a narrow gauge affair, and I had 
to " sit close," Arabs to the right hand, Arabs to 
the left hand. We were all hot, the Faithful and 
the Infidel alike, but I took it as coolly as any of 
them, knowing that they did not feel any worse 

55 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

about my company than I did about theirs. Our 
route lay through the land of Goshen. It did not 
bear any resemblance to the " Cheese Town," of 
Litchfield County, but, for all that, it is counted 
still the pick of the country. It was so as far back 
as when Pharaoh said to Joseph, " in the best of the 
land make thy father and brethren to dwell." There 
are more water courses, principally artificial, and 
more trees than elsewhere, but it is a flat and un- 
picturesque country nevertheless. !No allowance is 
made for refreshment by rail, and one has recourse 
to the Arab vendors, who crowd the windows at 
every platform. Little birds of the snipe family 
are exposed for sale, greasy, unclean, looking as if 
they had not been washed since they left the Nile. 
I concluded that a man, if he took any at all, should 
eat a cake of soap with each bird. Profound re- 
flection, induced by hunger, led me to the conclu- 
sion that boiled eggs and oranges would probably 
be as free from dirt as anything on the menu, and I 
acted accordingly. It requires considerable cour- 
age to eat the things set before you at railway sta- 
tions in Egypt, and ask no questions ; yes, I may say 
a man cannot go through those parts at all without 
" sand." 

At Tell el Kebir we pass the place where the 
English defeated Arabi in 1882, and noted the 
graves of the soldiers who fell in battle, all so well 

56 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

kept. It is an out-of-the-way place, indeed, for a 
Yorkshireman to lay his bones. But war is never 
hampered by sentiment. I thought, too, as I looked 
on those quiet mounds, of Dr. Thomas Browne's 
statement in the Urn Burial, that to the dying man 
it makes no difference where they lay him — 

Whether in St. Innocent's churchyard or in the 
sands of Egypt." 

At Ismailia we strike the Suez Canal, and the 
great crowd of Mohammedans leave for the Red 
Sea, and the Tomb of the Prophet. We are now at 
the Isthmus, " the key of Egypt." Geologists tell 
us that the waters of the Red Sea and of the Medi- 
terranean once fraternized, but it was long since, 
because, even in Herodotus' day, the neck of land 
was as wide as now. The famous canal is another 
illustration of the truth, " there is no new thing 
under the sun." The Pharaoh just before the Ex- 
odus had one; the Pharaoh that slew King Josiah 
had another. This one is the fourth or fifth of one 
sort or another that has married the two seas in the 
desert. The present scheme was advocated by Na- 
poleon, a hundred and two years ago, and, no doubt, 
would have " gone through," if it had not been for 
an engineer's mistake in calculation. The higher 
mathematics and some other ics and isms are often 
well up in the air, and it would no more do to im- 
peach their veracity than to commit the sin men- 

57 



A LEAVE OE ABSENCE 

tioned by Sidney Smith, that of speaking dis- 
respectfully of the equator. But when mathema- 
tics and some other arts do go astray, they stick at 
nothing. It was once demonstrated in Yale Col- 
lege that an ocean steamer could never go more 
than ten knots an hour, for, so the theorem proved, 
the water would otherwise rise up in advance and 
operate against the prow as a stone wall. But some 
blunderer, who did not know any better, went and 
tried it, and thereby spoiled a fine algebraic theory. 
Now the expert employed by Napoleon calculated 
that the Red Sea was thirty-three feet below the 
level of the Mediterranean; the calculation was 
about thirty-two feet and eleven inches out of the 
way, but it was enough to delay the attempt for 
sixty years. In 1836 a young consular clerk was 
sent to Egypt by the French. He became interested 
in Napoleon's project, talked it up in season, out of 
season. By 1859, this young man, De Lesseps, 
was able to throw his first spade of sand to the sun. 
Twenty thousand men labored for months before 
machinery could be applied at all. At one time the 
expense of supplying these laborers with water 
alone exceeded $1,600 per day. " Cheap as water," 
is a proverb that does not go in the East. In ten 
years they sank twenty-six feet and ninety-five mill- 
ion dollars. The canal, including the passage 
through the " Bitter Lakes," is just a hundred miles 

58 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

long. It is lighted by electricity at night, so that 
passage can be made any hour in the twenty-four. 
It is handsomely coped with cut stone and is main- 
tained in a thrifty, ship-shape manner. It creates 
a strange feeling in the beholder to see a great East 
Indiaman making a stately march across the desert 
on that Isthmian highway. The justification of that 
enormous expense is to be seen in this one item, it 
shortens the distance between London and Bombay 
by 5,500 miles, or forty-four per cent, of the entire 
voyage. The canal has a great bearing on our own 
project across the Isthmus of Panama. The engi- 
neering difficulties are much greater with us, for the 
Andes and the Rockies mingle their foot-hills on 
the Mexican Isthmus, while there are no hills at all 
on the Suez. But the necessities of commerce and 
of statesmanship are imperative: deep calleth unto 
deep across that American interval, and when the 
right Pathfinder has arisen, we of this generation 
shall sail through from sea to sea. 

At seven-thirty we arrived at Port Said. The 
first difficulty with this place consists in pronounc- 
ing it. There is an Arab guttural in the centre of it, 
but passing that or swallowing it, the traveller learns 
that the word is dissyllabic, with accent on the last, 
so he says something like Sah-eed, and the secret 
is out. Port Said is a city of thirty thousand peo- 
ple to-day, living on a salt marsh, with a harbor that 

59 



A LEAVE OP ABSENCE 

is simply a "dug-out." They have built a rock 
pier a mile long into the sea to keep back the en- 
croachment of the Nile mud from the West, and 
have reared a light-house which is one of the tallest 
in the world, whose light is visible for twenty-four 
miles. Everything is artificial at Port Said, the 
canal, the harbor, the town site, the society. The 
latter is made up of the riff-raff of all nations, with 
a dash of darkest Paris thrown in. But the town 
has a future, has its good with the bad, is already a 
formidable rival to Alexandria, and, who knows, 
may yet be one of the world's metropolises. 

This was my last glimpse of Egypt. The traveller 
naturally looks back after his tour of a country, 
however brief, and sums up his impressions. Eirst, 
it is a country that appeals to him from its immense 
antiquity. " Art is long," but never does it seem 
so long as in the Nile Valley. Next, it appeals to 
him as the home of Israel for four hundred years, 
the people who went down into Egypt a family, and 
came back a nation. A flat and monotonous coun- 
try has little attraction to a New Englander, but 
it was in just such a country that the Netherlanders 
grew up to be the race they are. Egypt has been a 
fountain of civilization in her day, and her day is 
not yet over. There is a promise concerning her 
that still bides its time. " In that day shall Israel 
be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a 

60 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

blessing in the midst of the land ; whom the Lord of 
Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt, my 
people." It is possible that the blessing is partly 
coming to a realization through the English occu- 
pancy. The Englishmen have in the East, what 
gardeners call " a growing hand," and everything 
is thrifty under their touch. The revenues are hon- 
estly collected and applied. The officials and 
soldiers have an alert and " dress parade " look, that 
is nowhere else observable. Christian England, too, 
has asserted itself in Egypt; I learned of some of the 
finest young men of Oxford and Cambridge, who 
had dedicated their lives to the uplifting of the 
blackest quarters in Cairo. No one can survey the 
beneficent effects of British rule in Egypt, that has 
begun to lift a bankrupt and discouraged nation to 
thriftiness, that is changing a turbulent and dis- 
satisfied population into an aspiring manhood, with- 
out realizing that the cross of St. George has come 
somewhere in touch with the Cross of Jerusalem, 
and in this sign there is conquest. 



VIII 
JAFFA 

IT took the Israelites forty years to get out of 
Egypt; it took us nine hours. The Mediter- 
ranean was calm, the moon bright, the night 
beautiful, so that few were willing to follow the 
example of the Prophet Jonah, in those same waters, 
who, " was gone down into the sides of the ship, and 
he lay and was fast asleep." The next morning the 
coast of Palestine lay before us, just as it appeared 
to Richard of the Lion-heart, to the Apostles, to 
Solomon's engineers in charge of the rafts floated 
down from Lebanon. It is a low, white-beached 
coast backed by distant hills. This is Jaffa, the an- 
cient Joppa, and the only harbor known to the Jews 
in all their history. A short distance from the 
sandy beach is a line of rocks protruding from the 
sea, sheltering in a feeble way a small anchorage 
between them and the land. In a feeble way, I re- 
peat, for the slightest wind lashes the whole ex- 
panse. Steamers always lie well out in the road- 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

stead, and frequently the surf makes it impossible 
to land passengers at all. The passage, when made, 
lies between two storm-beaten rocks, not twenty feet 
apart, through which the boatmen row, singing a 
refrain of "Haley! haley!" "Pull away! pull 
away! " To one of those rocks, the 'longshoremen 
say, Andromeda was chained, until rescued by Per- 
seus. Jaffa is one of the oldest cities in the world, 
a city set upon a hill. It derives its name from 
" japhah," to shine, on account of its sunny appear- 
ance, and well does it fulfil the role this morning. 
A beautiful plain surrounds it, where grow those 
luscious Jaffa oranges, famous the world over. A 
basketful for a franc, basket and all ! It makes the 
mouth water unto this day! 

At Jaffa one has his first experience in Palestin- 
ian character. He early learns that he is in " the 
land of promise," and of promise only, of fair words 
spoken but not kept, of engagements that are al- 
lowed to run on, well, as long as the one chronicled 
at Bridgewater, Mass., between Captain Thomas 
Baxter and Miss Whitman, " a long and tedious 
courtship of forty-eight years, which they both sus- 
tained with uncommon fortitude." Yes, it requires 
similar fortitude and some other virtues to deal with 
the inhabitants of the land to-day. " This is a plenty 
patience country," said a Syrian servant to his mas- 
ter. It is a plenty dirty country, also; and, on the 

63 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

principle that " shoemakers' children go barefoot," 
one of their chief industries is the making of soap. 

This is the land of the dragoman. He is in a 
class by himself. He is like Elihu, the son of Bara- 
chel, the Buzite, " full of matter," little of which 
is reliable. He is a good illustration of the proverb, 
" It is better not to know so much, than to know so 
many things that ain't so." The queer part of it, 
too, is that he is full of apparently exact statements, 
told with a serious air, and dropping from his dis- 
course incidentally, as it were, like the phrase in the 
lawyer's challenge to " meet me at sunrise in the 
four acre lot, be the same more or less." He tells 
you the greatest " whoppers " with a face like 
Samuel's. He will point to a granite rock, having 
two holes drilled in it, as though made for spokes to 
fit into, and say, " Do you see those holes? That is 
where the angel Gabriel ran his fingers in." He 
professes to be an antiquarian, but is no more simi- 
lar to a real scholar than scalawag is to Scaliger. At 
first you resent his imposition of legends, fairy sto- 
ries and pure lie, as being a reflection on your in- 
telligence. After a while you are amused, give him 
free rein and let him gang his ain gait. My first 
experience with him was in Jaffa. There were three 
places pointed out as the house of Simon the tanner, 
but our drago conducted us to the one with whose 
owner he had probably made the best arrangement. 
Now, said house is nothing less than an old Moham- 

64 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

medan chapel, possibly built over the traditional 
site, but not a stick or stone of the original could 
possibly be there. Yet he showed us the stair where 
Peter mounted, yea, the very place on the roof 
where he slept! And here I learned my first les- 
son in Turkish travel, namely, to take everything 
told you with a grain of Turk's Island salt. All the 
holy places are encrusted with legends, utterly puer- 
ile and bare-faced. All of them are surrounded 
with tawdry paper flowers, cheap chromos, tallow 
candles and the like, that do their best to dissipate 
the reverence and sentiment that should properly 
be associated with them. The traveller in Holy 
Land must rely upon his own knowledge of Script- 
ure, upon reputable guide-books and trustworthy 
scholarship, otherwise his faith will be weakened, 
not fortified by his tour. 

As I looked off from the roof of the alleged house 
of Simon, I asked myself, " What is there here that 
one can safely rest upon? " It is " hard by the sea" 
for one thing, and, for another, there is the Medi- 
terranean itself, looking even as it did to the fast 
closing eyes of the Apostle, brown, gray, blue, green, 
purple, and all very good. That sea, washing the 
shores of the Gentiles, was the highway over which 
the gospel was to go, so soon as Peter had learned 
that nevermore were any sons of Adam to be counted 
common or unclean. 

There is little to do in Joppa, but we did it con- 

65 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

scientiously. We picked our way through the dogs 
and children carpeting the streets, dodged the 
camels and the beggars, and regaled ourselves with 
the orange and the orange blossom. We visited the 
mission-school kept by Miss Arnott, an English lady, 
and heard some familiar hymns sung in Syriac. I 
did not see the consul, bearing the singular name of 
Mr. Hardegg, but I saw his neighbor, who might 
be named Mr. Hardnut, and a good many of his 
relatives. Here is where Dorcas entered the king- 
dom of heaven through the eye of a needle, and I 
aver on the testimony of two writers and my own 
eyesight, that few places need a Dorcas Society more 
unto this day. After lunching at the hotel, we set 
our faces toward Jerusalem, fifty-four miles distant 
by railway. The line crosses first the Maritime 
Plain, or Philistia. It is a beautiful expanse, fair 
as a garden of the Lord, full of grain and orchards. 
It was into those grain fields that Samson turned 
the foxes with firebrands, and got himself disliked. 
We were fortunate enough to spy two foxes, more 
like jackals, reminding me, indeed, of the coyotes 
on our frontier. They were graceful creatures, and 
when the train drew near they ran like yellow 
flames of wild-fire. We soon began to climb, for we 
were in the Hill Country of Judea. In these de- 
files Saul came out after David, in a way that sug- 
gested to David the familiar sports of the camp, " to 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

hunt thy servant as a flea, or as a partridge upon 
the mountain." The railway winds in and out along 
the steep valley, but always climbing, for there are 
twenty-six hundred feet to mount before reaching 
the holy city. At sunset we stop half a mile short of 
the Jaffa gate, and realize that before us lies what 
is to millions of people below and to a great cloud 
of witnesses above, the most sacred spot on earth. 



IX 

JEKUSALEM 

THE Roman Army caught their first glimpse 
of the city from Mount Scopus on the 
north. The Crusaders approached it from 
the west, breaking into the tearful and enthusias- 
tic cry, " Jerusalem! Jerusalem! " The yearly pil- 
grims to the passover and the palm-bearers of Our 
Lord's triumphal entry approached it from the east, 
where the finest view of the city is obtained, as it 
bursts into view over the shoulder of the Hill of 
Olives. " It was a city," says Josephus, " from 
which the traveller turned away his eyes as from the 
sun at noonday; " a city of towers and palaces, as it 
were, of mingled gold and snow. A passion for his 
city ran in the Jew's blood. To love her was more 
than patriotism, it was religion. Tears mingled with 
his voice as he sang, " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, 
let my right hand forget her cunning." It is a city 
that has passed through vicissitudes making the an- 
nals of others seem commonplace. Twenty-seven 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

times it has been besieged, seventeen times been 
desolated by conquerors; it lias been razed to the 
ground, a new city with a new name, iElia Capi- 
tolina, supplanted it, only to be again destroyed; it 
has been made unrecognizable to its own population, 
so that, if a Jew had come upon it, however well he 
had known it before, he would ask, " What place 
is this? " And yet, it has revived, has risen from its 
grave, no longer deserving of its ancient emblem, a 
woman seated upon the ground, but rather of one 
standing on her feet. Jerusalem! the beloved of 
David and of The Son of David, the ambition of 
Roman legions, the goal of Crusading Europe, the 
prey of desecrating Turks, the present raffle prize 
in the crafty game of a Sultan; on the surface of 
things, the sport of fate, beneath the surface, the 
never-forgotten of Providence. 

With such emotions struggling in the soul the 
Christian enters Jerusalem. Now let me deliver a 
round unvarnished tale of his subsequent emotions. 
I did not lose my head through sentiment; I nearly 
lost my feet through slime. The prophet Jeremiah 
pronounced it a cage of unclean birds ; it is the same 
to-day. The streets are slippery with filth and gar- 
bage, its many well-defined and several odors re- 
minding one of Coleridge's arraignment of Cologne. 
Innumerable curs still go round about the city and 
make a noise like a dog. Water is scarce. A pla- 

69 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

ard by your wash-basin reminds you of the same, 
adding, with an eye to economy, that it is so ex- 
pensive that many people cannot afford to wash at all, 
which fact is easily corroborated by acquaintance 
with your fellow-townsmen. It is not only soapless, 
it is hopeless. It is given up to strife. It is the 
home of warring factions, living in separate parts of 
the city, under the general law that " the Jews have 
no dealings with the Samaritans." The City of 
Peace is the City of Acrimony. Furthermore, 
a plague has fallen upon it against which there is no 
quarantine. Protestants, Catholics and Jews have 
lavishly contributed to the misery of Jerusalem, 
pauperizing it by misguided charity. Dr. Selah 
Merrill estimates that two-thirds of the fifty thou- 
sand inhabitants receive charitable aid in some form. 
The result is the blight of commercial enterprise. 
The city is not as large as one fancies, and as appears 
from views of it in print. To " walk round about 
Zion " would take only a good hour. Each side of 
the four, roughly speaking, would measure about 
as far as from Wanamaker's store to the upper end 
of Madison Square. I was prepared for certain re- 
pellant features of the city, such as rags, filth, beg- 
gary and discord, and had discounted them in ad- 
vance. But nothing could permanently dislodge the 
ineradicable reverence attached to the place. Zion's 
" perfection of beauty " is, indeed, veiled. The 

70 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

garden of the Lord — the boar out of the wood doth 
waste it. The lily work of the temple — they have 
broken down the carved work thereof with axes and 
hammers. Nevertheless, the devout mind always 
comes back to this, Jerusalem may have no present, 
but she has had a past, she will have a future. 

One goes about the city on donkeys accompanied 
by a dragoman. The latter is useful in negotiating 
with the citizens, gate keepers, bucksheesh strikers 
and others, but is full of old wives' fables. The his- 
torical sense is lost in the East, and they seem never 
to have heard an address delivered by the author 
on Commencement Day, entitled " The decay 
of romance." For romance and romancing is in good 
healthy activity in every dragoman, guide and key- 
holder of my knowledge, from Dan to Beersheba. 
On this account many of the " show places " of the 
city are of great suspicion to the investigator. 

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for instance, 
is of doubtful reverence to me. I value it mostly 
for the sake of the devout, but mistaken, souls who 
have worshipped there. Its very situation makes it 
impossible. It never could have been without the 
city walls, except upon the violent supposition that 
they made at this point a long re-entrant angle. 
But passing that, it is a place full of superstitious 
myths. Here they point you out the altar of Mel- 
chizedek, the chapel of Adam, the centre of the 

71 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

earth, the altar of the Penitent Thief, and a score of 
other incredulities. All this is encompassed with 
chapels and churches of various sects, suggesting dis- 
cord rather than unity. Yet it was this spot, er- 
roneously located and full of errors, for which Eu- 
rope fought madly with Asia in crusading fury. 

The Via Dolorosa is another improbability. Not 
a stone or timber of the original way taken by our 
Lord can possibly be extant, and yet the Via is 
marked with " stations," each credited with full de- 
tails. 

The same applies to Bethlehem, six miles away, 
which I visited, on donkey back, with my kindly 
hearted dragoman. It is a pleasant journey, and 
the road is very suggestive of memories, though the 
legends told you make your incrudulity rise to the 
top. That monument may or may not be the tomb 
of Rachel, you cannot tell. That well at the en- 
trance of the city may or may not be the one for 
whose water David longed. The Grotto of the Na- 
tivity awakens your suspicions, though you enter 
sympathetically into the two rival services that are 
being held there in competing chapels on the spot. 
But other things you do receive and freely. There 
before you are the undoubted fields where Ruth 
gleaned and shepherds watched their flocks. There 
is the site, if not the buildings, where David lived 
and Christ was born. Bethlehem is still small, her 

72 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

thrift is precariously dependent upon the carving 
of souvenirs in olive and pearl; it is not clean; it 
groans under Turkish rule; but, for all that, " Thou 
are not the least among the thousands of Judah." 

But to return to Jerusalem itself, what is there, 
after all, that satisfies and repays the visitor? Let 
us ascend the Mount of Olives on the east, and like 
Our Lord, sit over against the city. There it lies be- 
fore us in its noble expanse. The general features of 
it, told in psalm and prophecy, stand out. " Jeru- 
salem is builded as a city that is compact together." 
It is one upon which the traveller comes suddenly, 
there are no suburbs. It is an elevated city, built 
on two hills, Zion to the west, Moriah to the east 
on which stood the Temple, and now stands its suc- 
cessor, the Mosque of Omar. Between them ran 
the Tyropcean or Cheesemakers' valley, now almost 
filled up and the wall carried across it. About it 
are hills, yet not as I expected, rising above the city, 
for, with the exception of Olivet, there is no land 
adjacent to Jerusalem higher than itself. " The 
mountains round about Jerusalem " can only refer 
to the Mountains of Moab, that loom up grandly 
across the Jordan, and look so surprisingly near. 
Jerusalem is also a hurled city, heaps upon heaps, 
and graves within graves. The ancient city is 
twenty to thirty feet below the surface. It is a 
venerable city; if Josephus were right in calling its 

73 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

age 21 YY at its destruction by Titus (A.D. YO), 
then it is now 400Y years old. It is a miscellaneous 
city, with suggestions of Moslems, Crusaders, Ro- 
mans, Christians and Jews all through it. 

The first object that might strike an observer are 
the walls and foundations. It was so anciently, 
" Mark well her bulwarks;" it made part of the im- 
agery of prophecy, " Thou shalt call her walls Sal- 
vation, and her gates Praise," while in Revelation 
that splendid list of foundations is enumerated, the 
first, jasper, the second, sapphire, the third, a chal- 
cedony. The present walls are from ten to fifteen 
feet wide, and from twenty-five to forty high. In 
one place are a few massive substructions, and here 
on every Friday assemble the Jews, standing each in 
the shroud in which he will be buried, to wail over 
their fallen and desecrated capitol. The lament 
used is the pathetic language of Isaiah lxiv, and 
Psalm lxxix, " Our holy and our beautiful house, 
where our fathers praised Thee, is burned up with 
fire; and all our pleasant things are laid waste; " 
" We are become a reproach to our neighbors, a 
scorn and derision to them that are round about 
us." 

As the most prominent feature of Jerusalem of 
old was the Temple, so its successor, the Mosque of 
Omar, is the most striking feature to-day. The site 
itself is the undoubted locality of the holy place of 

74 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

old. It has had a great history. Here Abraham 
offered his son Isaac, here David reared the altar on 
the threshing-floor of Araunah, here Solomon 
wrought his miracle in stone, without sound of ham- 
mer. " Like some tall palm, the noiseless fabric 
grew." Here, too, was reared the second Temple, 
whose glory was to be greater than the former, be- 
cause to it should suddenly come the Lord of the 
Temple. A shaft sunk by explorers on the east side 
has disclosed some of the foundations of Solomon, 
marked with the inscriptions of his Phenician archi- 
tects. A surprising feature of this temple area is 
the dome of the original rock protruding above the 
surface, a mass sixty-five by forty-five feet in dimen- 
sions. Many are the conjectures of scholars as to this 
remarkable rock, perhaps the most reasonable being 
that it is the base of the old altar, left bare on pur- 
pose, because originally altars had to be erected with- 
out tools. Beneath it is a chamber thought to be for 
the disposal of the blood and refuse of the offerings. 
Beneath that again is a well, perhaps connected with 
the ablutions of the altar. This well illustrates Mo- 
hammedan legend perfectly. According to them, 
it is the opening into Hades, and was formerly used 
as a kind of post-office between the two worlds, until 
a certain widow of Jerusalem, brought so many 
tales from the dead to the living and vice versa, that 
she first involved the whole city in discord, and, 

75 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

next, raised such a commotion in the world below 
that it was forthwith closed. 

The Mount of Olives is one of the most attrac- 
tive places of all. On it is Gethsemane, probably 
not the original site, but near it, which, by reason of 
its trees, shrubbery and quiet, easily suggests the 
garden where Jesus oft-times resorted with His dis- 
ciples. Toward the east one sees the blue waters of 
the Dead Sea, astonishingly near, as if in the next 
township. Far below us it is, 3,700 feet below, the 
lowest water level on the surface of the earth. A 
Greek church and tower crown the summit of Olivet. 
Shepherds and flocks are to be found on the slope. 
The reverent mind pictures King David toiling up 
that summit, while Shimei, lurking near, is casting 
dust and stones; it pictures the vast Passover crowds 
from all over the world, spread out in tents on this and 
surrounding hills, like the sand that is by the sea- 
shore for abundance. It pictures the procession of 
palm-bearers winding over its shoulder and down 
through St. Stephen's gate at our feet. It pictures 
the smaller group that was led out later as far as 
Bethany, when the Leader was parted from them, 
and a cloud received Him out of their sight. It is 
the last spot on earth trodden by Our Lord. " Take 
thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon 
thou standest is holy ground." 

One beautiful Sabbath afternoon I went out to 

76 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

the little knoll north of the city, that appealed to 
me as being the probable site of Calvary. Its posi- 
tion corresponds with all we know of that green hill 
far away without the city walls. The grottos below 
supply cavernous eyes that make the rounded hill 
resemble still more the place of a skull. Near by is 
a recently exhumed garden and rock-made tomb, 
the reputed garden of Joseph of Arimathea, which 
are quietly maintained in simple beauty by a devout 
English lady. I stood by the place of the cross and 
looked toward the city, which I suppose, our 
Saviour also faced. It was a noisy, squalid and pes- 
tilential city that I saw, still needing, and in large 
measure rejecting the Son of God. As it is still, 
even in its vileness, " beautiful for situation," so a 
few years of Christian rule might once more make 
it " the joy of the whole earth." 

Unquestionably, as surely as the promises of God, 
this result will some day be brought about. A 
Voice will yet cry, " Arise, shine, for thy light is 
come, and the glory of God is risen upon thee." 
Then shall the Daughter of Zion awake, and put 
on her beautiful garments. But the vision tarries; 
they still wait for it; and meanwhile "Jerusalem 
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the 
times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." 



77 



CAEMEL 

THE usual route north, from Jerusalem is 
through Samaria, and by camel, donkey, or 
horse. It is tent life, but no picnic. I did 
not make this overland journey, solely for lack of 
time, since I must push on and join a party in ad- 
vance of me. So I returned to Jaffa by rail, and 
" took shipping " up the coast. We left the Holy 
City early in the morning, our train drawn by an 
American locomotive. The guard, or as we would 
say, brakeman, was an Arab, innocent of the Eng- 
lish tongue. But we met each other on neutral 
territory, the French language, which he used in 
arabesque and I in picturesque style, both enjoying 
the effect. There was no Frenchman present to call 
us down, so we stood on the rear platform, admiring 
the scenery and guessing at each other's idioms with 
mutual satisfaction. The day was fair, and so were 
the flowers. The Maritime Plain was luxuriant in 
standing grain, and the orchards near Jaffa were 

78 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

altars of incense. I am not surprised to learn that 
the scent of the oranges is borne out to sea, and is 
perceptible miles from the shore. 

Our steamer proved to be the " El Kahira," of 
the Khedival Line. We had another exciting pas- 
sage in boarding her, owing to the boatmen hav- 
ing a riot over every passenger, which is a custom of 
the country, and keeps life from being monotonous. 
It was a lovely night, and greatly did we enjoy the 
sail up the coast. We thought of Paul, of Richard 
the Lion-hearted, of Saladin the equally leonine, 
and of Napoleon, all of whom had passed over the 
same course. At ten o'clock we rounded the bold 
promontory of Carmel, and dropped anchor in the 
little harbor of Haifa, at the southern end of the 
Bay of Acre. 

Haifa is the best harbor on the Palestinian coast. 
It nestles under Mount Carmel, which here boldly 
assails the sea with a mass of rock five hundred and 
fifty feet in height. It is not a Biblical city, but 
flourished during the Crusades. Here Richard 
Coeur de Lion lay sick of a fever for weeks, until 
the report reached England that he was dead. 
Above the town on the brow of the hill stands the 
Carmelite Monastery, which we visited next morn- 
ing, and were regaled by the hospitable inmates. I 
examined the library, but its literature was so me- 
diaeval that I saw scarcely a single familiar book. 

79 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

Wear it is shown the cave where Elisha fed the 
prophets in hiding. In an ancient record Carmel 
is called "the Mount of a thousand caves." This 
monastery is the finest of its kind in Palestine. The 
monks claim that Elijah himself was the founder 
of the brotherhood; which complaisant belief I did 
not think it worth while to disturb. Within its 
walls Napoleon left his wounded in 1799; all were 
massacred by the Arabs; a strange place for 
butchery, this house of peace. The present town of 
Haifa is a thrifty place, due to the German colony 
of Templeites, who have settled there. Their stone 
houses, tree-lined roads, trim gardens, school- 
house, church, and other public buildings give an 
enterprising air to the place. The Templeites are 
a people who believe in the near coming of Our Lord, 
and hold that, preparatory to the event, a body of be- 
lievers must be made ready for Him, as a house for 
an expected tenant, ready in life and practice. I 
opine that their name comes from the prophetic ex- 
pression " The temple of the Lord are we." This 
is a doctrine that nobody will dispute, and all will 
commend; though whether it is necessary to go to 
Palestine in order to enforce it may be doubted. 
But here they are, three hundred of them, with 
others elsewhere, trying to establish themselves with- 
in easy communication of Jerusalem, so as to be 
ready when the hour comes, living a quiet, industri- 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

ous life, " providing things honest in the sight of all 
men." Our landlord was of the colony, and so were 
my next two hosts, at Nazareth and Tiberias. They 
reminded me of Quakers, and won my hearty re- 
spect. They have been thirty years in Haifa; the 
monks seven hundred. But the former have gained 
the regard of their neighbors and have blessed the 
country about them, bringing vehicles, good roads, 
and thrift, as the Carmelites never have. For true 
religion is not a dream upon a hill-top, it is a life 
in the valley. 

A beautiful beach curves around from Haifa to 
Acre, twelve miles long, forming a miniature Bay 
of Naples. It is hard enough to drive upon, and 
the horses' hoofs not leave a dent. It is the home of 
the murex, from which was made the famous 
Tyrian purple in the city a few miles north of us 
on the coast, distinctly visible from the Carmel 
Monastery. The dye was extracted from a vessel 
in the fish's throat. It was this Our Lord referred 
to in the phrase, " fine linen and purple." Napo- 
leon called Acre, " the key of Palestine." It has 
sustained fifteen sieges, and no similar area on the 
face of the earth has been so drenched with blood. 
When taken by the Saracens, sixty thousand people 
were put to death. Aceldama ! It is now a city of 
nine thousand, and is fortified after Turkish notions. 
but a modern fleet could knock it to pieces in twenty 

81 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

minutes. It was last bombarded in 1840, by Ad- 
miral Napier, and seems not to have recovered from 
the shock. The masonry of the walls and piers is 
in bad repair. An old Moslem took us through its 
narrow streets, amid the suspicious looks and scowls 
of Arab faces. An officious Turkish soldier forbad 
my taking a picture, perhaps afraid that I would 
give away the plan of their dilapidated old forti- 
fication, but, all the same, I got one on the sly. 
Then we drove back over the smooth beach, past 
the place, where, it is claimed, glass was first dis- 
covered by the kindling of a fire on the shore. All 
this is territory that never was owned by Israel. It 
was the Phoenicia of old, whence came the builders 
of Solomon's temple, whence came the woman who 
cried after Him. It is a long strip by the sea, a " shoe- 
string district," indeed, a few miles only in width, 
but filled with an ingenious, enterprising, Yankee- 
like race. One of the finest things I saw in all my 
travels came from this very district, a beautifully 
carved sarcophagus, now in the museum at Constan- 
tinople. 

The next day we drove on to Nazareth, twenty- 
three miles. Our wagon was American built, 
driven by " Andreas,'" a famous linesman, second 
only to his father, who had driven the Kaiser a few 
months before, and received a decoration for the 
exploit. The Kaiser left a great impression on all 

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AND OTHEE LEAVES 

that country, as of a " Big Injun," indeed. It left 
an impression on Mr. Cook himself, so his agent told 
me, inasmuch as the Turkish government had con- 
tracted with him for the tour, and he had yet to see 
the color of their money. Our road lay along the 
base of Mt. Carmel for a while. It is a beautiful 
range and reminded me forcibly of the Taconic, only 
it is not now so well wooded. But, " the excellency 
of Carmel " was a proverbial phrase of old, alluding 
to its richness, and when Amos would paint the 
coming judgment he says, " the top of Carmel shall 
wither," as if one should say, " the leaves in Val- 
lombrosa shall cease." Carmel itself signifies " the 
vineyard of God," and, with its adjacent plain of 
Jezreel, was the very Eden of Canaan. A railway is 
building from Haifa to Damascus, skirting the Sea 
of Galilee, and we drove alongside of it for a dis- 
tance. In six miles we came to the Kishon, here 
spanned by a handsome railway bridge of stone. It 
is the place " where the battle was fought," when 
Barak, " the Lightning Flash," fell upon the hosts of 
Sisera. Deborah was the Barbara Frietche of Israel ; 
she could not lead an army, but she could inspire 
it; she " took up the flag that the men hauled 
down " and cheered them on. The place is miry; 
we had great difficulty in passing it, which very 
fact accounted in part for the rout of old. The 
nine hundred chariots on which Sisera relied were 

S3 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

mired, the stream rose in its bed " that ancient river, 
the river Kishon," and swept them away; then 
" the horse hoofs were broken by means of the pranc- 
ings, the prancings of the mighty ones." A thun- 
der-storm added to their discomfiture, and to the 
poetic imagination of Israel, " the stars in their 
courses fought against Sisera." This is the first of 
those great battles that have made this Plain of 
Jezreel or Esdraelon famous in all history. 

This plain cuts like a wedge the great backbone 
of Canaan, extending from the Mediterranean near- 
ly to the Sea of Galilee. It is flanked by two sen- 
tinels, Carmel on the west, and Tabor on the east. 
It took its name from the royal city of Jezreel, to 
which Elijah once ran before the rain in record-break- 
ing time. It is very fertile, and, in Our Lord's day, 
contained two hundred villages. I dwell upon this 
plain, because it lay under the eyes of the Boy 
Christ, whose home was on the hills north of it. 
It was a great page of national history that lay thus 
open before Him, where were fought the battles of 
Barak and Gideon, of Saul and David, where Josiah 
also, the last of the good kings, met his death from 
Pharaoh Necho. It was here, too, that He went 
round about the villages in that " circle of the Gen- 
tiles," when the people that sat in darkness saw a 
great light. I thought of these things as we bowled 
along after our three horses abreast, or passed a long 

84 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

train of camels, twenty strong, loaded with wheat 
for the sea. Every mile was eloquent with history. 
There was the place where Elijah held his sacrifice 
with multitudes, multitudes in the valley of de- 
cision; and near it the hill where the priests of Baal 
met their fate. We picnicked in a fine oak grove, 
and at four o'clock drew into the town of Nazareth. 



XI 
NAZARETH 

NAZARETH is surrounded by some of the 
most fertile soil in Palestine. It is here 
that Asher " dipped his foot in oil." Ac- 
cording to the rabbis, it was easier to rear a grove of 
olives in Galilee than one child in Judea. The cost 
of living was also only a fifth of that in the south- 
ern district. It lies half-way between the two seas, 
the Mediterranean and Galilee, overlooking the 
great plain, and hemmed in by sightly hills. As I 
looked on the town from above, I noted that it was 
pear-shaped, with the principal buildings in the 
stem. It is not a clean place, much garbage being 
thrown into the streets. There is an altar dedi- 
cated to the Angel Gabriel in one of the churches, 
but if some of the offerings thereon were only dedi- 
cated to one of Waring's " white angels," it would 
be healthier for the place, and keep " the angel " 
busy besides. But Palestine, though full of dust, 

86 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

seems never to have learned the ethics of the dust, 
the duty of being clean. 

We visited the so-called holy places, and, I grieve 
to state, felt a certain suspicion mingled with re- 
pulsion for them all. All are surrounded by 
church walls of rival sects, and are replete with 
tawdry emblems and cheap chromos. If they 
would only leave such sacred places alone, or sur- 
round them with a low stone wall, it would greatly 
add to their sanctity. But we are dubious all the 
time of their genuineness, because of the rivalry ex- 
isting between place and place, and because of the 
commercial spirit that shows in all their vested 
keepers. 

What did I take satisfaction in? First, in the 
" Fountain of the Virgin." It is a flowing well in 
the midst of the city, resorted to at all hours, abun- 
dant, convenient. It seemed probable that Mary 
and her wondrous Son, might oft have resorted 
thither. The well, or fountain rather, is in a re- 
cess, arched over with stone of modern work, at a 
corner of two streets. I sat on a wall near by and 
watched the women and children gather there. 
They have long jars, which are balanced grace- 
fully on the head, without support from the hands. 
I photographed several of them as they departed 
from the fountain. The women of ISTazareth are 
reputed to be fairer than their sisters, a boon re- 

87 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

ceived from the Virgin. Conder thinks their faces 
more Italian than Arabian in feature ; I agree with 
him. The fountain is the most attractive spot in the 
city, and " meet me at the fountain " might easily 
be a local saying. But the shops are attractive, too ; 
the trades are carried on with little variation from 
bygone ages. I watched the carpenter, the black- 
smith, the leather worker, feeling that I was look- 
ing upon the artisanship of two thousand years ago. 
I saw a plough made, for example, that was of the 
same pattern used by Elisha, when Elijah found 
him with twelve yoke of oxen. The children, also, 
are interesting. I know not how many strains are 
mingled in the present stock, but I felt that I saw 
such faces as marked the companions of Him who 
there increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
with God and man. An English Orphanage is one 
of the features of the town. I heard their sweet 
young voices in the English church, which we at- 
tended. It was a happy thought to connect the im- 
provement of their childhood with the advancing 
childhood of Christ. 

The most impressive feature of all was the view 
from the hill back of the city. It is the finest in 
Palestine, and one of the most extensive I have ever 
seen. My mind associates it in extent and impres- 
siveness with the view of Moses from Pisgah's 
height, and with the survey of Christ Himself when 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

" the Devil took Him up into an exceeding high 
mountain." Certainly the eyes of the Boy Christ 
must have kindled, as they looked off from that 
commanding height. As a spectacle alone, it is 
wonderfully beautiful. On one side glistens the 
Mediterranean with its white ribbon of sand, on the 
other the Sea of Genessaret, harp-shaped, harp-in- 
spiring. To the south stretches the lovely plain, 
rimmed by the hills of Samaria; to the north rises 
the snowy peak of Hermon. I wonder that more is 
not made of Hermon in the Scriptures. It is the most 
beautiful and conspicuous object in all the land. 
It rises like a vision from many a vantage ground, 
and the traveller's utterances thereat are set with 
exclamation points. Yet it is not specially promi- 
nent in Israel's poetry. " As the dew of Hermon," 
is referred to, and the lxxxixth Psalm declares, 
" Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name." 
But I should expect the Hebrew Poets to show an en- 
thusiasm such as the Japanese have for Fujiyama, 
who make it a point of honor never to paint a picture 
without including their snow mountain. But while 
the view is fine as scenery, it is still finer as history. 
It must have stirred the heart of a patriotic boy 
to look around upon those battle-fields and grounds 
where history had been made. There is the place 
where Jonah was reared, and there the retreat of 
Endor's witch; there the field where the fleece was 

89 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

laid under the stars, and there the mountain where 
fell that father and son, who were lovely and pleasant 
in their lives, and in death were not divided. A 
hundred Old Testament memories greet the behold- 
er, a hundred more connected with Our Lord Him- 
self, the brow of the hill whence His countrymen 
would have cast Him headlong, the home of Zebe- 
dee, the mountain of Transfiguration, the cities 
where He did many of His mighty works, and on 
the opposite side of the map Tyre and Sidon, which, 
under similar privileges, would have repented in 
sackcloth and ashes. It was Sabbath morning, 
when I took that view, the mountain was delectable, 
the sordid Palestine of to-day was transfigured, and 
I said, " It is good to be here ! " 



XII 
THE SEA OF GALILEE 

THE following day we drove twenty miles fur- 
ther to the Sea of Galilee. We passed 
through the village of Cana, a wretched lit- 
tle place, needing more than six water pots of water 
for purification, and suggesting anything but the 
gayety of weddings. Cana offers a sad example of 
the commercial spirit that is eating the heart out of 
religion in Palestine. They used to be Orthodox 
Greeks, but, on discovering that they had a price 
in the market as a " holy place," they promptly ac- 
cepted overtures elsewhere, and are now doing busi- 
ness under another sign. " Thrift, thrift, Horatio!" 
At Cana I saw on a door-step a child of two years 
old. I was in doubt of his ability to speak at all, but 
the doubt was set at rest as soon as he caught sight 
of me, by opening his mouth and saying, " Buck- 
sheesh! " Many of the children are very pretty, 
all are interesting, but it pains one to see how they 
are taught to be beggars from infancy. I photo- 

91 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

graphed some of them; one little lad at the watering 
place was very shy and embarrassed, but we assured 
him we meant no bodily harm, and he finally sur- 
rendered to our lenticular gun. 

This reminds me of an incident happening to a 
clerical friend of mine on Mount Ebal. It is not 
commonly ascended by tourists, but he climbed to 
the summit by an old faint trail. All went well 
until his return, when a Bedouin rose up out of the 
earth and made fierce signs in " your-money-or- 
your-life " way. My friend was alone, unarmed, 
distant from any possible assistance. The highway- 
man drew a long glittering knife, and visions of 
slaughter danced before the minister's eyes. What 
was to prevent his being murdered and left for 
dead upon the mountain? But an inspiration seized 
him. Quick as a flash he pulled out his field glasses 
and trained them on " Jack Sheppard." Evidently 
the latter's imagination, debauched by an evil con- 
science, pictured the instrument as some Maxim 
gun of the latest pattern, fearsome, grewsome, 
deathsome. He lost no time in throwing up his 
hands and crying " Yi! yi! yi! " which, being in- 
terpreted meant, " Don't shoot. I'll come down." 
Then the dominie made him throw down his weap- 
on; after that made him get over the precipice and 
hang by his hands. Aye, the man of piety made 
him get over the brink a little more than was strictly 

92 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

necessary, rubbing it in as a wholesome lesson; for 
this mountain was the very spot where the law was 
once read and the curses thereof were given particu- 
lar emphasis. The man in wild-eyed terror kept 
his gaze fixed on " that shooting iron " and obeyed 
with meekness and respect. This story teacheth, 
first that, the world over, conscience doth make cow- 
ards of us all; next, that a man's five wits are often 
as good as a man's seven-shooter, although in a mi- 
nority of two; lastly, that it is pretty hard at any 
time to make a minister hold-up. If he wants to, he 
will go on and nobody can stop him. 

At one place on our journey we passed eleven 
camels. They shied at the unusual sight of three 
horses abreast, and the drivers held our Jehu re- 
sponsible for it. A sharp altercation took place in 
Arabic, which is a language made for disputation. 
I thought they would certainly set upon him, which 
fracas would have involved the rest of us, but they 
contented themselves, at length, with the remark, 
" If it were not for the travellers with you, we 
would show you a thing." I am glad they did not 
show it. The flowers everywhere are in great pro- 
fusion, a glorious sisterhood. Prominent among 
them are the bright scarlet poppies, more common 
even than ox-eyed daisies in New England. They are 
brilliant and graceful flowers, and are commonly 
considered the so-called " lilies of the field," which 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

outranked Solomon in glory. The road soon be- 
gins to descend, and ultimately leads the traveller 
to a region below sea level. It is a singular fact, to 
which Dr. Smith calls attention, that Christ spent 
the greater part of His ministry in a trench six hun- 
dred and eighty feet below the Mediterranean. It 
is as if He sought to reach a " submerged tenth." 
One goes from the temperate to the tropic zone in 
passing from Nazareth to Capernaum, from the city 
of His childhood to the city of His adoption. 

The Lake of Gennesaret, or Sea of Galilee, or 
Sea of Tiberias, bursts upon one from the hill above 
Tiberias, and the vision stays with the beholder for 
life. It is a beautiful sheet of water, clear and lus- 
trous. It is shaped like a harp, like a pear, like 
South America, but fairer than all combined. 
" The Lord hath made seven seas," said the Rabbis, 
" but He hath chosen Gennesaret for Himself." 
That is, as there was a chosen nation, and a chosen 
land, so there was a chosen sea. It is not large; 
bulk is not necessary to greatness. Twelve miles by 
eight, but it is enough. In Our Lord's time it was 
circled by a chain of cities and by an unbroken 
ring of buildings. Great roads flanked it. Beside it 
caravans and commerce ran their trunk lines. Now 
it is circled by the pebble and the reed ; its beach is 
trodden by the lizard and the crane ; its teeming thou- 
sands have gone over the hills and far away. There 

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AND OTHES LEAVES 

are a few villages in place of the cities, the largest of 
these is Tiberias. " It is strange that a black-heart- 
ed Emperor, who never saw the lake should 
have left his name upon it," and there be no local 
trace of Him who taught by its beaches, walked 
upon its surface as upon a sea of glass, and called its 
finny tribes to the right side of the boat. 

Our hotel was situated just within a quaint old 
Crusader's gate. Near by an English mission was 
established, making a brave fight against heathen 
odds. The village is strewn with stones, rubbish, 
children and dogs. The night was full of stars, the 
mind full of memories. An English party took oc- 
casion to sing, 

" Galilee, sweet Galilee, 
Where Jesus loved so oft to be." 

The next was a red-letter day. We took boats 
and sturdy boatmen, wearing the crimson shirts and 
emblems of the great Cook, and rowed to the upper 
end of the lake. We landed on the delta of the 
Jordan, a part of the Plain of Gennesaret, and the 
site of the ancient Bethsaida (one or two in number), 
so difficult to locate by the scholars. Ear above us 
towered Mount Hermon with his snow-cap on. It 
is the snow on those mountains, present the year 
around, that accounts for the cold cyclonic blasts 
sweeping down the Jordan valley, and into that 

95 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

tropic depression, which have ever rendered the 
lake so fitfully tempestuous. We landed at the 
mouth of the river and looked across the plain 
where the Five Thousand were fed. A group of 
Bedouins are living there now in comparative wret- 
chedness, reminding one of Indians on the plains. 
They emerged from their tents, and several of 
the children and old women sat as models for 
our cameras. They were planting melon-seed in a 
scratched-up garden, but we were told that their 
diet consists mainly of fish and cucumbers. The Jor- 
dan was as wide as Broadway, and somewhat dis- 
colored from the melting snows. Nevertheless, its 
coolness did not prevent our dipping into the lake 
a few hours later. We had, indeed, a fine swim, and 
I was proud to follow in the foot-strokes of St. Peter. 
Our luncheon was enjoyed on a rocky shore near 
Tell Hum, the generally accepted site of Caper- 
naum. There before us lay the steep place across 
the lake, where the swine ran violently down. To 
our right were the Horns of Hattin, where the Beati- 
tudes were delivered. And all about us were the 
shores that re-echoed the voice of Him who spake 
as never man spake. Capernaum consists of a few 
broken columns close to the shore. It had been 
taken possession of quite recently by some priests, 
who were going to make a living out of it as a 
"holy place." 

The Sea of Galilee grows upon one, the more it 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

is seen. The hills are vividly green, the waters 
vividly blue. Water-fowl are seen constantly upon 
its surface. The boatmen have variegated and 
graceful costumes. Camels, donkeys, and Bedouins 
picturesquely line its banks, while the ruins of 
places, whose doom was foretold by Our Saviour, 
bear silent testimony to Him. It must always have 
been a restful scene to look upon, even in the height 
of its activity, for its beauty is of the kind that does 
not excite, but calms the mind with sense of pleasure. 
The lake once teemed with fish, and every Israelite 
had the right of fishery. Two thousand craft sailed 
its waters in the time of Christ, making that guild 
of watermen from whom Our Lord drew His fol- 
lowing. A great scholar has called attention to the 
fact that it was not from the discontented classes 
He called His associates, as David in the cave 
of Adullam, but from men of honest toil and of 
daily duties. All in all, the Sea of Galilee is the 
most satisfying place to me of all that are associated 
with the Son of the Blessed. There is less of sordid 
human meddlesomeness there than in any other part 
of Holy Land. The hills and the waters are there 
just as He saw them, untarnished by the touch of 
man. The heavens remain as they were when He 
spent the night on the mountain, their steady lights 
still mirrored 

" Like 6tars on the sea, 
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee." 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

The changeless scene commemorates the Un- 
changeable One, " Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, 
and to-day, and forever." 



XIII 
EAKEWELL TO HOLY LAND 

WE turned our backs upon the harp-like sea 
with the reluctance of those who leave 
music behind them. Once more we as- 
cended the hill and traversed the great plain. There 
were the Horns of Hattin, famous for the Sermon on 
the Mount and for the Waterloo of the Crusaders, 
" where a false Christianity met its judicial end 
within view of the scenes where Christ proclaimed 
the gospel of peace." Once more we were impressed 
with this battle-field of nations, and could see, what 
an English officer has asserted, that if another war 
should invade Palestine, the plain of Esdraelon 
would certainly be its theatre. Nor is it surprising 
that the Apostle John saw in it the symbolic arena 
of that final conflict, " God and Magog to the fray," 
as though the opposing forces were massed in 
front of the bordering city of Megiddo, " And he 
gathered them together into a place called in the 
Hebrew tongue, Armageddon." Yet it was all fair 

99 

LofC. 



A LEAVE OI ABSENCE 

and peaceful, as we saw it, containing nothing more 
warlike than the horns of grazing cattle, each land- 
owner seeming, for the moment, to have inherited 
the pastoral blessing, " to every one grass in the 
field." 

While waiting for the steamer at Haifa, we drove 
down the coast and viewed the ruins of Athlit. 
This was the last castle held by the Crusaders in 
their temporary grasp of Holy Land. It was a mas- 
sive ruin, full of arches, battlements, and towers. 
The banquet hall was a high vaulted chamber, a 
hundred and twenty feet by thirty-six. No doubt 
it had often resounded with the shouts of Richard 
and his Cross-wearing followers. Crusaders look 
well in oil and water colors, but they were a hard 
lot to the naked eye. Athlit is a castle by the sea, 
pounded by the waves on three sides of it. A beau- 
tiful beach flanks it, and we accepted the invitation 
of the Mediterranean to dash into its waves. 

The Mediterranean is Salter than the Atlantic, by 
reason of the fact that its rainfall is less than half 
its evaporation. I was surprised to learn, too, that 
though there are all kinds of currents at Gibraltar, 
surface, bottom, mid-depth, and inshore, yet the pre- 
vailing flow is inward, not outward. Our guide 
warned us against sharks, but we had had so much 
experience with them by land that we did not fear 
them by sea. The most of a fish we could evoke 
100 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

from the waters was a friendly porpoise, who swam 
in shore to learn how far Americans differed from 
Armenians. 

That was our last glimpse of Canaan, the birth- 
place of the Bible, the land that above all others 
has given form and feature to its language. I was 
glad to sense something of David's meaning, " I 
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills; from whence 
cometh my help?" I was glad to tread softly the 
graves of patriarchs and prophets, and the paths that 
the place of His feet had made glorious. It is some- 
thing of an incentive always to stand on the heights 
of history, or in valleys where sun and moon did 
also stand still. No American can be unmoved at 
Mount Vernon ; no Christian be heartless in the place 
where Jesus went about doing good. But I am per- 
suaded that Providence did not mean to have His 
followers make a fetich of Holy Land. The de- 
feat of the Crusaders, who would have made a 
superstitious use of the Holy Sepulchre, was a gain 
to the cause of Christ; for His is a spiritual practice, 
not a sentimental enthusiasm. The worship of 
relics and the veneration of holy places approaches 
idolatry. My own belief is that the present oblitera- 
tion of Biblical places, and the difficulties of identi- 
fication, are Divinely ordered, lest the minds of His 
people should cling too much to " the mountain that 
might be touched," rather than to " the mountain 
101 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

coming down from God out of heaven." Sacred 
places are wont to be full of pious figments and re- 
ligious inventions, rather than of holy memories and 
devout inspirations. Even the brazen serpent, an un- 
doubted relic of divine grace, became a snare unto 
Israel at length; they "did burn incense to it;" 
wherefore Hezekiah wisely " brake it in pieces and 
called it Nehushtan, a piece of brass." Moreover, 
since the world-wide gospel has come, every soil is 
Holy Land. " Woman, believe me, the hour com- 
eth, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet 
at Jerusalem, worship the Father. . . . But 
the hour cometh, and now is, when the true 
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and 
in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship 
Him." There will always be a value attached to 
the Holy City, but only as it leads to a City still 
holier, whose builder and maker is God. The one 
" answereth to the Jerusalem which now is, and is 
in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem, 
which is above, is free, which is the mother of us 
all." 



XIV 
MY FAKTHEST EAST 

ON" the north side of a bold promontory, flank- 
ing the Bay of St. George, lies the city of 
Beyrout, leaning upon a mountain, dip- 
ping her foot in the sea, olive crowned, vine em- 
bowered, pulsing with the life of caravan and loco- 
motive, no mean city, but marching to her destiny 
a hundred and ten thousand strong. Beyrout is the 
Athens of Syria, and she owes more to The Ameri- 
can Board of Foreign Missions than the Greek city 
did to Pericles. Sixteen journals are printed here 
in Arabic alone, four hospitals are maintained, and 
above twenty extensive educational institutions. 
All these came out of, or were suggested by, a little 
vine planted by the American Board eighty years 
ago. 

The early years of our missionaries witnessed a 
long struggle against intolerance, pestilence, wars, 
poverty and banishment. After a two years' exile 
in Malta, our little force returned to Beyrout. A 

103 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

small rowboat came out to meet them. It contained 
five persons, the entire Protestant population of the 
Turkish Empire. That five is now seventy-five 
thousand. 

Here the Board opened the first school for girls 
in the Empire of the Sultan. Here they made that 
elegant and finished translation of the Bible into 
Arabic, already passed through thirty-two editions, 
which goes into all parts of the globe, spanning a 
hundred and twenty degrees of longitude. For Ara- 
bic is the sacred language of a hundred and eighty 
millions of people. Here one sees the typesetter at 
work on Arabic, guiding his hands wittingly, for the 
line has to be pointed above, below, and on both sides 
of the letter. It was a nice problem to solve, how to 
introduce those vowel points after the consonants 
were set up, but a Yankee solved it; by casting the 
type with a slot in each corner for receiving the 
vowel mark. 

The Syrian Protestant College is located here, 
with an attendance of four hundred and thirty-four 
students from all parts of Asia Minor, Egypt and 
Persia. They have ten fine stone buildings and a 
magnificent site overlooking the Mediterranean, 
laid out with terraces and shrubbery, exquisitely 
kept, an object-lesson in itself to that population 
which cares so little for public appearances. 

We attended chapel at four o'clock. The 

104 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

faculty of about thirty men, mostly Americans, 
sat in a semicircle on the platform, an impos- 
ing body. The singing by the students was strong, 
hearty, and, like "Webster's dictionary, of large vol- 
ume. They are not a singing race, having little to 
sing for, and, I was reminded of Mr. Moody's com- 
ment on his own singing, that he " sang everything 
to one tune, and nobody knew the name of that." 
The swarthy faces looked strange to me, but when 
I saw a young fellow snap a paper pellet at a com- 
panion's visage, I felt as if I were back in the 
sophomore class again. 

It was a rare pleasure to enjoy a tour of the col- 
lege under its genial President, the Rev. Daniel 
Bliss, D.D., who showed us all manner of courtesy, 
including a delicious luncheon at his residence. 
Here, too, we saw representatives of other Chris- 
tian bodies, English, Scotch and American, all 
working harmoniously in that difficult field, many of 
whom we met in the parlors of Dr. Jessup, greatly 
enjoying their society and rejoicing in their noble 
work. 

The next morning we made an early start for 
Damascus, eighty-six miles distant by narrow-gauge 
railway. The road is built upon the plan of the 
railway up Mount Washington, with rack and pin- 
ion, it being impossible to climb those grades without 
cogs. The train runs very slowly in places, not faster 

105 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

than a funeral walk. As we wound in and out of the 
hills and precipices of the Lebanon Mountains, the 
changing views were exceedingly grand. Some 
said that the Rocky and Colorado mountains had 
nothing finer to offer. "We found it an inspiring 
day, and it was decided that the view of the city and 
the sea was alone worth the cost of the journey. 
The mountains were snow covered. At one place 
we had the weird experience of entering a cloud. 
It was chill as the grave. The highest point 
reached was 4,830 feet, about twice the height of 
the highest land in Connecticut. Coming down 
through the valleys, we saw clear water-courses. 
Women were washing on the banks, beating the gar- 
ments on a stone in lieu of soap. I was reminded of 
a similar scene which Onkelos once looked upon in 
these parts. Onkelos was a famous Rabbi, author 
of the Targum that bears his name. He was pass- 
ing women at their washing, and ventured to re- 
prove a certain maid for looking at him, stating with 
prunes, prisms and propriety, that a woman should 
look upon the ground. Whereupon the maid re- 
torted, " It is meet for a man to look upon the 
ground, for he was made from it; but woman 
should look upon man, for she was made from him." 
The discomfited Rabbi then washed his hands of the 
subject, and retreated behind his targum. 

The elevation of body furnished the proper con- 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

dition for a fall of spirits, and we improved the oc- 
casion. The circumstances were these. Our train 
stopped for refreshments at a little village called 
Mallakah, and it was announced that thirty min- 
utes would be accorded that function. Another east- 
bound train also stopped, and there was much backing 
and filling. Being of a sanguine nature and resting 
in the printed official assurance, I calmly ate through 
eighteen minutes of the menu, then went out de- 
liberately and inquired for the train to Damascus. 
Said the official, " Le train est fini! " " Finished? " 
said I. " How can it be finished? One cannot 
finish a thirty-minute train in eighteen." He did 
not answer my arithmetic, but pointed to the train 
disappearing around the curve, and shrugged his 
shoulders. There we were, three of us, stranded in 
a heathen hamlet! No other train for twenty-four 
hours. ISTo baggage and very little self-respect. 
However, we pulled ourselves together, thought of 
Romans viii : 28, and re-arranged our campaign. 
First, we telegraphed for our baggage, which re- 
appeared the next day without so much as a tooth- 
brush missing. Then I went out and bargained with 
a wily native for a three-horse vehicle. After re- 
ducing his demands from thirty francs to twenty, 
we chartered the chariot and started for Baalbec, 
three hours distant, over a fine road. 

En route we saw one of the most beautiful sights 

107 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

yet observed, a novelty in mid-air. It was a flock 
of storks, say a thousand in number, wheeling in 
slow and stately circles above, without a quiver of 
the wing, a soundless, motionless, aerial march. 
The wonder of their locomotion was not so striking 
as the dissolving view of their colors, from black to 
white, from white again to black. The dark wings 
showed for half of the circle against the sky, and 
then, as their white breasts and under wings ap- 
peared, they turned into pure silver. It was like 
the metamorphosis of black birds into a snow-cloud 
and vice versa. This continued before us in regu- 
larity and rotation for half an hour, an aviary 
eclipse and re-eclipse. 

At the end of the long valley we found the cele- 
brated ruins of Baalbec, the Heliopolis of the 
Greeks, once a flourishing seat of sun worship. 
They are not as old as many Egyptian temples, but 
they have some remarkable properties. Six col- 
umns of the fifty-four are still standing in one tem- 
ple and nineteen out of forty-six in another, all 
beautifully carved and beautifully harmonious. 
One sees here, also, the largest stones ever used 
in architecture. In one course are three, measur- 
ing sixty, sixty-one and sixty-two feet respectively 
in length by thirteen in width. How they were ever 
quarried, or being quarried were ever moved, or, 
conceding both, were ever set up without chipping 

108 



AND OTHEE LEAVES 

the edges, are problems in mechanics that are not 
solvable in this day. In the adjoining quarry is an 
even larger stone, seventy-two feet in length, which 
was never detached. My companions were a lady 
who had been sent around the world as a missionary 
of the W. C. T. U., and a Doctor of Divinity, who 
had lost a limb by a Vicksburg shell, royal and ex- 
perienced travellers both. We had a fire kindled in 
the hotel parlor and regaled each other, traveller 
fashion, with accounts of our adventures and hair- 
breadth escapes. Particularly we congratulated 
each other on the good fortune of missing that train, 
otherwise we should have missed Baalbec. Provi- 
dence is said to keep a special watch over children, 
drunkards and Americans. I believe it. 

Damascus, " the pearl of the East," is a city lying 
on a plain 2,200 feet above sea level, bounded by 
the mountains on one side and by gardens, orchards 
and vineyards uncounted on the other. Through 
it flows the Abana, a deep snow-water stream, the 
life and soul of the city, entering every house and 
irrigating three hundred miles of her horticulture; 
which, with her companion, the Awaj, or ancient 
Pharpar, justified the boast of Naaman, " better than 
all the waters of Israel." Damascus bursts upon the 
traveller like a vision. They still show the moun- 
tain perch from which Mahomet looked down upon 
the city in rapture, only to refuse to enter it, saying, 

109 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

" Man can have but one Paradise, and that must 
not be sought on earth." I confess that I felt the 
same way, when I first looked down from Town 
Hill on the Salisbury Paradise, but, unlike Ma- 
homet, concluded to take the risk. It must be ad- 
mitted, however, that Mahomet might have found 
that distance lent enchantment to the view, for the 
city near-to is not so fascinating. There is a per- 
ceptible difference between it and Paradise. 

We entered the city one brilliant afternoon, and, 
after a few moments of repair and refreshment at 
our hotel, took a carriage and drove about it. Our 
dragoman was a descendant of Mahomet, as his 
green turban indicated; he exhibited all the show 
places with the pride of a man who had made their 
history, as in part he had. He showed the place 
where St. Paul was converted, and where he was 
let down in a basket by the wall; to some people 
they still show the basket, but we looked too skepti- 
cal, I suppose. He showed us where Naaman had his 
house, where Ananias lived, and other interesting 
localities, all of them, " important, if true." East- 
ern guides are as unreliable in their history and 
archaeology as a man generally is in giving his wife 
an account of his experience before marriage. How- 
ever, knowing something of the history ourselves, 
we were aware that we were treading places of ex- 
citement. There was the arch where hundreds of 
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AND OTHER LEAVES 

Christians lost their heads in the massacre of 1860, 
a grewsome place; there was the street whence the 
caravan starts every year for Mecca. One had just 
arrived from Bagdad, the camels kneeling in de- 
licious restfulness after their two months' journey. 
Columns and sculpture here and there bore witness 
to the former magnificence of Damascus, when 
Noureddin and Saladin made it their capital; when 
Tamerlane, also, whom the very Arabs called " the 
Wild Beast," massacred and plundered the city. 
There, too, was the Via Recta, which our drago, 
priding himself on his English, invariably an- 
nounced as " the Straight called Street." It was 
" straight as a string," and seems to have been 
named on the principle of " lucus a non lucendo." 
Damascus is famous for its bazaars and street 
traffic. The place gave name to "damask," now 
applied to linens, but originally to the figured pat- 
terns in silk so wondrously wrought in this city. 
Here was made the world-famous Damascus steel, 
which has a peculiar wavy or water-line appearance, 
and is noted for its elasticity and edge. We great- 
ly enjoyed those busy marts with their countless 
buyers and sellers. A feature of the streets is the 
number of strange cries to attract trade. They do 
not call out the thing itself, but invent some strik- 
ing phrase that is a still better advertisement. The 
flower-man will cry, " Here is your chance to make 
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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

a present to your mother-in-law." The water-cress 
man shouts, " If any old woman will eat these 
cresses, she will be young again before morning." 
A characteristic of Damascus, as of other places in 
the East, is the sebil, or water philanthropy. A man, 
wishing to do a meritorious thing, perhaps in pen- 
ance or in gratitude, will hire a water-carrier to dis- 
tribute water to the thirsty, the carrier using the 
identical language of Isaiah, " Ho! every one that 
thirsteth, come ye to the waters; yea, come, buy 
without money and without price." Few people 
can resist the attractions of Damascus bazaars, and 
they generally come away with a load of goods. 
The rugs are especially captivating, so is the cos- 
tumery. "We climbed the mosque and saw the city 
at its best, just before sunset, exceedingly pictu- 
resque with its minarets, its domes, its green bor- 
ders, its quaint walls, its mountain background, and 
its myriad associations. It was the home of Abra- 
ham's steward, Eliezer, the wife finder, the home of 
Naaman and his little maid, of the Hadads and 
Benhadads of prophecy, the spiritual birth-place of 
St. Paul, the city of caliphs and conquerors, of 
victims and vanquished, and its wheel is still turn- 
ing. 

This city was my farthest east. It lies in 36° 18' 
East longitude, which is 110° 18' distant from 
New York, and therefore represents a time differ- 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

ence of seven hours and twenty minutes. There- 
after, I was steadily working toward America, the 
direction the star of empire also takes. Our return 
to Beyrout was relieved by an interesting incident 
at Mallakah. "We were accused of trying to " beat 
our board," when last passing through, and the 
cashier came out in dudgeon to threaten us with the 
police. He was too excited to listen to any expla- 
nation, and when a third party, a friendly Greek, 
put in a word of soothing, it was like pouring oil on 
troubled fires. He blazed away to the end of his 
vocabulary, when he was ably reinforced by his 
wife. The latter was a woman, not of words only, 
but of deeds, and promptly filched our bundle of 
luncheon by way of reprisal. It was more amusing 
than provoking, and we kept our faces, our tempers, 
and our composure. Waiting until the Oriental 
had blown off steam to the limit of the gauge, I took 
him in hand coolly, told him how, when, and where 
we had paid for our meals, what coins we had given 
him, and what change he had returned. A look of 
dawning intelligence came into his face, he admit- 
ted that some of us were honest, but he needed a 
scape-goat for his spleen and a cushion for his pride, 
so he gave the Doctor of Divinity a withering look 
that ought to haunt him till death. He even re- 
fused his coin, and went off with the air of a man 
who had been dealing with pitch. The bundle was 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

shot back at us by the woman, who looked as if 
she might have put strychnine, ratsbane, and Prus- 
sic acid into every sandwich. 



XV 

ASIA MINOR 

WE sailed out of Beyrout harbor on a 
French steamer, the " Melbourne," on a 
thousand-mile cruise, bound for Constan- 
tinople. We were in Turkish waters all the while, 
but we thought, not of the Turks, but of the Ionian 
colonists, who had made those seas the highways of 
art and commerce, and of the Apostles who had in- 
augurated the great foreign missionary movements 
of the church upon their surface. The journey oc- 
cupies about five days and is exceedingly pictu- 
resque and romantic, with historic coasts and lovely 
islands constantly in view. But at first we ran out 
of sight of land for a full day, so unexpectedly 
great are the distances on the Mediterranean. We 
put into the port of Vathy on the beautiful isle of 
Samos. This is a flourishing isle, having a prince 
of its own, and enjoying the unusual privilege of 
home rule. It is an island whose name appears 
again and again in Greek history; Pythagoras was 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

born here; Poly crates developed the golden age of 
Ionic art upon its hills. It has always been cele- 
brated for its wine, as appears in the oft re-current 
line in Byron's Song, 

" Fill high the bowl with Samian wine." 

One of my shipmates, cognizant of this fact, sent a 
native ashore with a silver coin to procure a bottle 
of it. The man has not returned yet. 

The following day we spent in the wonderful har- 
bor of Smyrna. The approach to the city is beau- 
tiful. It lies at the end of a long, well-sheltered 
bay, making a port that could hold the navies of the 
world. It is the finest harbor in the Mediterranean. 
Back of the terraced city the huge form of Mount 
Pagus reared itself. Smyrna is another place equally 
renowned for its beauty and history. Its name goes 
back into the dawn of history, and has never been 
changed. It is remembered as the home of Poly- 
carp, the martyr, whose tomb we visited, and as the 
seat of one of those Seven Churches of Asia to which 
the letters of Kevelation were addressed. 

It is an active town of near two hundred thou- 
sand population, already the second city in the Em- 
pire, and enjoying a larger commerce than Constan- 
tinople itself. When the much-talked-of railway 
to Bagdad, opening up the great grain fields of the 
Euphrates, is completed, it bids fair to become the 

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AND OTHEK LEAVES 

Liverpool of Asia. I asked a banker what was the 
commercial rate of interest; he said, eight to twelve 
per cent. It already has a large caravan traffic and 
some railroad connections; say five hundred miles. 
Its quay is full of many colored turbans and resounds 
with all the dialects of Babel. Its bazaars are crowd- 
ed, and here one finds to perfection the two great 
specialties of its trade, Smyrna figs and Smyrna rugs. 
The same energy that shows itself in the trade of 
the city appeal's in its missionary life. I visited 
the American High School, conducted by the 
American Board. It has grown from little to more, 
against odds that would have killed anything but- 
a missionary plant, has taken in a building here 
and a corner there, until it is now a sturdy plant, 
with all the elements of thrift about it. Not that it 
has handsome or even adequate quarters, but it is 
absolutely self-supporting. Think of that, the next 
time some Philistine undertakes to tell you that 
" It costs fifty thousand dollars to convert a heathen, 
and then he doesn't stay converted." The laugh is 
against the Philistine ! Here is a flourishing kinder- 
garten, too, supported by The Woman's Board, 
and doing a beautiful work. The incidental advan- 
tage of an American institution like that, in teach- 
ing order, cleanliness and beautification is incal- 
culable. The Turk may call the city " Giaour Is- 
mir," Infidel Smyrna, but I would rather name it 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

after its great martyr, Polycarpia, city of many 
fruits. 

Then we sailed up the coast, passed Tenedos, 
where the Greeks retired after making that wooden- 
horse play on the Trojans. By the way, the Tro- 
jans never could have played that horse trick on the 
Greeks, anymore than Mr. Weller could have 
worked his piano game for getting Mr. Pickwick 
out of prison. We passed the Troad, scene of a 
petty scrimmage, which would have been forgotten 
long since, but for the genius of Homer. There, 
too, is the little city, where St. Paul had his vision 
of one beckoning from Europe, where also he left 
the cloak and parchments, pathetic mention of 
which is among the last known words of the great 
apostle. 

The Dardanelles, or ancient Hellespont, lie next 
in our pathway. They are from one to four miles 
wide, and remind us of the western end of Long 
Island Sound. Romance and history have estab- 
lished themselves on these banks. Hero lived on 
one side of the water, we are told, and Leander on 
the other. He was a good swimmer and used to 
cross over, guided by a torch set by Hero, " a light 
in the window for thee." But he tried it once too 
often; and when his body was washed ashore the 
maid promptly cast herself into the sea, and was 
buried in the same grave with her lover. This story 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

of love and prowess is regularly repeated to every 
child born within sight of the Levant, and never 
fails to bring salt water to the surface. Lord Byron 
was so affected that, in spite of his lame foot, he tried 
the experiment himself, and actually swam the 
straits; since which the natives have regarded the 
tale as " proven true." Here Xerxes crossed upon 
his bridge of boats, and showed his self-command 
by having the sea, which had wrecked some of his 
pontoons, properly lashed. It is a pleasant sail, 
some fifty miles in length, having Europe on the 
one side and Asia on the other. Turkish castles ap- 
pear here and there, also the large city of Gallipolis. 
Then comes the Sea of Marmora, a curious little sea, 
sandwiched in between the Mediterranean and the 
Black Sea. It suddenly widens out after leaving 
Gallipolis until the shores are forty miles apart, 
when it begins to contract, and at a hundred and ten 
miles on we as suddenly strike the Bosphorus. It is 
a lovely panorama all the way, the water is calm, 
the air balmy, the passengers on deck, eager and 
enthusiastic to catch the first glimpse of the City 
of the Sultan. 



XVI 
CONSTANTINOPLE 

CONSTANTINOPLE lies on three waters 
and on seven hills. Its situation is un- 
rivalled, whether for strategy, commerce, or 
beauty. It is the virtual end of the Mediterranean, 
commands the Black Sea, and invites the trade of 
three continents. One side of the city is washed by 
the Sea of Marmora, the other by the Bosphorus, 
while an arm of the latter makes up into the heart 
of the city, affording anchorage for twelve hundred 
ships. This is called the Golden Horn, partly from 
its shape (though Strabo thought it more like a 
stag's horn than anything else), and partly from its 
cornucopia-like blessing to the city, filling it with 
shiploads of the world's treasure. The city looks 
queenly from every direction. I thought nothing 
could exceed its superb appearance as viewed from 
the sea, but the impression was even finer when I be- 
held it from a hill across the Bosphorus. No other 
place has so many large and beautiful mosques, 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

whose graceful and sky-piercing minarets are the 
characteristic feature of the city. The emblems of 
Constantinople have, for ages, been the star and 
crescent, and they eminently fit its altitude and po- 
tency. These emblems have been adopted by the 
Sultan himself, but the city is more star-like than 
Abdul Hamid, and has a future more expanding 
than that of the Turkish Empire. 

The old part of Constantinople, called Stamboul, 
lies on the Sea of Marmora; it is now the Turkish 
quarter and the seat of government. It was set- 
tled centuries ago by the Greeks. A certain colony 
following in the wake of another, were directed by 
the oracle to found their city opposite the " City of 
the Blind." This direction itself was rather blind, 
but it became translucent, when they saw that the 
former colony had settled on the Asiatic side of the 
Bosphorus, as though blind indeed, to the blessing 
of the Golden Horn. This is one more of those 
legends whose catalogue includes the wolf story of 
Eome, the ox-hide incident of New York, and the- 
place-where-the-cow-lay-down tale of Boston. 

The colonists called the place Byzantium, after 
Byzas, their leader, and thereby hangs the tale of 
all the " Byzantine art " that one is so constantly 
meeting in the East. But Constantine wanted a 
New Rome, and simply obliterated the old place by 
superimposing the glory of the new. So Con- 
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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

stantinople extinguished Byzantium. Here was the 
true capital of the world for centuries. It is still 
called " New Rome " in the documents of the Or- 
thodox Eastern Church. It has had its pages writ 
in red, like its rival on the Tiber. The sack of Con- 
stantinople, by the Turks, in 1453, is counted one 
of the bloodiest chapters in history. Yet the fall of 
the city, like the fall of man, had its compensations; 
it scattered its scholars over Europe, it sowed Greek 
learning everywhere, and thus it prepared for the 
Renaissance and the Reformation. These facts im- 
part a wealth of interest to the great capital. 

The first thing we did by way of exploration was 
to climb the Tower of Galata and get a bird's-eye 
view of the city. Like all Gaul, it is divided into 
three parts, Stamboul on the west, Galata and Pera 
on the east, separated by the Golden Horn. Pera 
means " the beyond," and is the modern city contain- 
ing the hotels and embassies. Across the Bosphorus 
lies another city, Scutari. The Bosphorus itself 
leads the eye towards its mouth, sixteen miles to the 
north. It is a beautiful stream, reminding one in 
its volume of water of the Niagara River. Jason 
sailed down it with the golden fleece. Xenophon 
crossed it with his Ten Thousand. It is the outlet 
of that foggy sea, the terror of mariners, which the 
Greeks termed Euxenos, " good to strangers," for 
the reason that it was just the opposite. The gild- 
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AND OTHER LEAVES 

ing of its name wore off after a while, and it is now 
called the Black Sea. Below us the ships of all na- 
tions lie at anchor, the flags of all countries wave 
in air; the war vessels of all ages frown each other 
out of countenance. A million people live within 
sight of that tower and ten million dogs. I have 
not counted the latter, or the former, but the one 
is a Turkish estimate, the other is an American. 

Now let us go down and stand on the Galata 
Bridge. If you stand there long enough, you will 
see every nationality on earth cross it. It is a toll 
bridge, connecting the old city with the new. Here 
comes one of the famous Turkish porters, a perfect 
Atlas. He has a saddle on his back to make the 
load ride easily, and is bent almost double with his 
burden. He lives on vegetables and fruit, but can 
carry a cask of wine, a load of hay, a cord of wood, 
or anything else that four ordinary men can place on 
top of him. Talk about the white man's burden, it 
is nothing compared to the Turkish porter's. Over 
there to the right is Step Street, which is a veritable 
flight of stairs up the hill. Under the bridge are 
darting hundreds of boats, called caiques (kah- 
eeks), of which there are said to be 30,000 at hand. 
The caique is a long, graceful craft, having no 
seats except cushions in the very bottom of the boat, 
with an easy gliding motion, extremely pleasant. 

At the Stamboul end of the bridge are the ba- 
rn 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

zaars. They are roofed over, reminding one a little 
of Fulton Market, but every kind of product in the 
world is to be found there. The standing places are 
full of sheep. Some of them are as clean as Mary's 
little lamb, many of them tied with ribbons. For 
a Mohammedan feast approaches, whereat every 
family will have a mutton roast. Here comes the 
vender of lemonade. His fountain is a complicated 
affair, half glass, half brass, slung over his shoul- 
der. The bowls are of brass, too, and he holds them 
as castanets, making a clatter to attract attention. 
When he fills the flowing bowl, he stoops forward 
and deftly turns the acetic stream from above his 
shoulder into the cup. Mind your foot there ! You 
are stepping on a dog, on a dozen dogs! They 
swarm in every street and lane ; black, brown, dingy, 
and in all the newest shades of tan. They are of 
the real " yaller dog " variety, half wolf, half fox, 
the sharpest curs that ever evaded a dog tax. In- 
deed, they have no tax collector to fear, are given 
the freedom of the city, and are the " White 
Angels " of Constantinople. They have the diges- 
tion of an alligator, and each night eat the streets 
clear of everything, but the cobble-stones. They 
have their own wards and spheres of influence. Woe 
be to the stray uitlander dog that does not keep his 
distance ! He may come out against them one way, 
but they make him flee before them seven ways. 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

Yet for all they are so many, it is said that hydro- 
phobia is unknown in the city. 

The great feature of Constantinople is the 
Mosque of St. Sophia. It is not as imposing a 
structure as some other mosques, and the interior is 
almost invariably disappointing at first. One won- 
ders upon what the reputation of the place was ever 
made. It is undeniably dingy, and here and there 
are plaster and tawdry-looking paint. But wait. 
Look at that bold span of arches, that noble dome 
a hundred and seven feet in diameter. Remark 
those columns, they are from Baalbec, from Ephe- 
sus, from Athens. Notice those mosaics, each repre- 
senting the life-time of an artist. Did you ever see 
finer windows? The dome is made of pumice stone, 
so as to be as light as possible. The whole effect is 
wonderfully airy and graceful. Porphyry, lapis 
lazuli, pearl, stones of art, of treasure, of history, 
have been massed here. The whole world has been 
laid under contribution, until its builder, Constan- 
tine, cried in ecstasy, " O Solomon, I have sur- 
passed thee ! " 

There are other mosques in Constantinople that 
attract admiration. The general features of all are 
the same, namely, a dome or series of domes, slender 
spires called minarets, from four to twenty, a lava- 
tory in the court, the Mecca point within toward 
which the face is turned in prayer, countless rugs 
125 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

and as many lamps, huge shields upon the walls, con- 
taining the signature of Mahomet and extracts from 
the Koran, such as "Allah il Allah," " God is God," 
or " Allah mozout" " God is present." Generally 
there are a few worshippers within, sitting tailor- 
fashion upon the rugs, and occasionally touching 
the forehead to the floor. In St. Sophia one feels 
a sense of desecration. Originally a Christian 
church, it has been transformed for Mohammedan 
use by violence. The rugs are all set at an angle 
with the lines of the church, in order to conform 
to the Mecca point. The arms of the cross on the 
heavy bronze doors have been torn off by fanatical 
Moslems. 

One of the pleasures of Constantinople is a visit 
to the so-called Sweet Waters of Europe. These 
springs lie at the head of the Golden Horn and are 
the rendezvous for all the gentry and nobility of 
the city, together with its Vanity Fair. Here one 
sees gold lace by the acre and Arab horses at their 
best. The Turk is a man after Mr. Weller's own 
heart, " the werry best judge of a horse you ever 
knowed." Their instinct for horse-flesh is unerring. 
Here are the strolling players, mountebanks, fakirs, 
and catchpenny artists of all ranks. The ladies of 
Constantinople are out in force, too, but it is little 
one can see of their faces, owing to the universal 
veil. 

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AND OTHEK LEAVES 

Quite a different entertainment is that of the pub- 
lic story-teller; one meets him constantly in the 
East. He is usually hired by some smoking estab- 
lishment, the place being crowded with men, to 
whom he affords an Arabian entertainment for 
a thousand and one nights. He delivers his tale 
amid a cloud of smoke, talking now toward one side 
of the room and again toward the other, turn about 
being fair play. I heard no applause, and remarked 
more contentment than excitement about the per- 
formance. The Greek bards wrought their hearers 
up to ecstasy by reciting the Iliad, and Sheherazade 
kept a man spell-bound for two years and a half, 
but their successors have no such fortune. In Chi- 
cago the affair would be voted " slow." 

Much more exciting that this was the exhibit of 
the Howling Dervishes. These Dervishes are re- 
garded with extraordinary respect all over the Em- 
pire. They form practically a secret society, a 
Mafia, and woe be to the man who incurs their en- 
mity! They communicate with each other from 
city to city, and hound him with their vengeance 
to the end of life. The howling transaction takes 
place on certain days and attracts a throng. They 
begin by forming a line of men at one end of the 
room, who commence to recite in a stiff, insistant 
way the undisputed fact, " Allah il Allah" This 
they do, first bowing to the left and anon to the 

127 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

right. It reminds you of that ancient cry, " Great 
is Diana of the Ephesians." As they warm to the 
work, the pace increases. It makes the back ache to 
look at them! After an hour or more, the breath 
being pretty well spent or bowed out of them, they 
drop to the syllable " Hu! " which means He, and 
is applied to the Deity. This is continued until ex- 
haustation is reached, but just before the dead point, 
the Holy Man in charge gives a sign and the ma- 
chinery stops. I felt no particular emotion up to 
this point, being perfectly willing that the Howl- 
ers or anybody else should be happy in their own 
way; but when they brought in a row of children, 
and the Holy Man prepared to walk on them, I 
came near making a " howl " of my own. Indig- 
nation culminated when they brought in a baby 
not six months old for him to stand on. The theory 
is, that his feet will press some of his reverence's 
virtue into them, and they be immune from sick- 
ness. The child cried, of course, with what little 
breath it had left, whereupon I rushed into the 
open air, for in another minute I should have broken 
up the meeting. 

As a lady had described a ride in a caique as " the 
poetry of motion," and Turkish coffee as " the nec- 
tar of the gods," we resolved to combine the two 
superlatives by a trip to Bechiktag. The latter is 
a boat station on the Bosphorus, just above the city, 

128 



AND OTEEB LEAVES 

where a little cafe is to be found on the pier, famous 
for its beverage. The proprietor is said to have 
monopolized all there is of a particular growth, and 
to select each berry by hand; hence the reputation 
of his coffee. It certainly was fine; also the glide of 
the caique ; also the Bosphorus itself, with its beauti- 
ful shores, its changing views of the great city and 
suburbs, its multifarious shipping and war vessels. 
It was sunset, as we returned, and the beginning of 
a Mohammedan feast. This was ushered in with 
the roar of many guns, reminding us of the Fourth 
of July. Now that I am on the Bosphorus, I may 
mention meeting a young soldier on a ferry-boat. 
He had been to some English school, evidently, and 
knew a little English. This accomplishment he 
aired with great satisfaction, and with the aim of 
practising his vocabulary on me. He was flushed 
with liquor, and inclined to familiarity. So I took 
him in hand as follows: " My martial friend, why 
is your damask cheek suffused with this flush of 
shame? " He studied on the subject a while, then 
said : " I have just had a lemonade, and am half 
dead drunk." 

The missionary work of Constantinople is one of 
the most interesting features of it. It centres in the 
Bible House in Stamboul. Here one sees the prep- 
aration for sending out Christian literature into all 
parts of the Empire. The library of Oriental books 

129 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

is extensive; the force of scholars, some native, some 
from America, are actively engaged. The printing- 
presses are humming. Turkey has not issued half 
a dozen books this century that are of any thought 
value, and if the Christians of the country are to be 
fed, a literature must be furnished them outside of 
the native press. The Turkish censor is very much 
alive, and he can see more hidden meanings in a per- 
fectly harmless paragraph than Sergeant Buzfuz 
did in " Chops and tomato sauce." 

A missionary is popularly regarded as a man 
mounted on a barrel, preaching to a street-corner 
audience out of a Bagster Bible. As a matter of 
fact, he is a foreman, a superintendent, a campaign 
planner. He has from ten to twenty native work- 
ers under his charge, and keeps them all busy, a 
West Pointer over enlisted volunteers. He is a 
man of much correspondence and much journey- 
ing, an educator, an adviser, a preacher, an author. 
He operates a great amount of machinery connected 
with churches, schools, hospitals and printing- 
presses. He is, above all things else, a level-headed 
man of affairs, with tact, ingenuity, gumption, en- 
terprise, and that indefinable quality called by ISTew 
Englanders, " faculty," which consists of equal 
parts of the art of putting it and the art of letting it 
alone. He is hampered by lack of funds, the very 
growth of his work keeping him on starvation diet. 
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AND OTHER LEAVES 

He is in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in 
perils by his own countrymen, who sometimes re- 
turn and slander him. Withal, he is a man of like 
passions with ourselves. Missionaries are sometimes 
as much tried by each other as the Pilgrim Mothers 
were tried by the Pilgrim Fathers. For which 
reason it does them good occasionally to see a fresh 
face from America. It warms their heart to have 
an American call, give them a hail and be friendly. 
The ungodly are not so. I refer to certain eminent 
divines who sail into Constantinople, and never go 
near the Bible House, ships that pass in the night. 
The very sailors, who scrub the decks, ought to pelt 
them with holy stones. 

Flowever, the missionary has heard the motto, 
" Keep sweet and go ahead." It was a Turkish mis- 
sionary who used to say, " Look on the bright side, 
and if there isn't any bright side, polish up the dark 
side." He has no pyrotechnics, he sounds no trum- 
pet before him when he prays, but he is quietly 
" doing his duty in that station of life in which it 
has pleased God to place him." The same applies 
to his wife, who is a missionary raised to the nth 
power. He shows us in actual practice the Will- 
iam Carey principle of attempting great things for 
God, of expecting great things from God. He is a 
corner-stone man, a sure-nail man, a mustard-seed 
man, and the Thirteenth Chapter of First Corin- 

131 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

thians made flesh. They may sit in darkness, but 
they have seen a great light. They dwell among 
a people of unclean lips, but it is theirs by gospel 
grace to purify hearts as no fuller on earth can 
white them. The call for retreat, for grounding 
arms, for hauling down the flag, may come from us, 
but never from them, who are bearing the burden 
and heat of the day. They are going forth con- 
quering and to conquer; the Lord their God is with 
them, and the shout of a King is among them. 

We had the good fortune to see the ceremony 
known as the Salamlik. This is the public attend- 
ance on Friday, the Mohammedan Sabbath, of the 
Sultan at his private mosque. He is accompanied 
by his court and by ten thousand of his troops. 
Throngs of people are there to view and all the em- 
bassies in glittering array. The latter are privi- 
leged to issue a certain number of tickets to their 
friends, " to assist in the ceremony of the Salamik," 
as the invitation reads. The Sultan is head of the 
Moslem faith, and his prayers within the mosque are 
uttered in a representative capacity. The time with- 
in is about twenty minutes. On emerging, he enters 
another carriage drawn by four horses and takes the 
reins himself, his suite following on foot. We were 
there in season, and entered the palace grounds amid 
the waving of plumes, the champing of horses and 
the flashing of jewels and gold. After a two hours' 

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AND OTHEK LEAVES 

test of patience, the soldiers broke out into a roar 
of greeting, and His Majesty appeared. He passed 
within a few feet of me so that I had full oppor- 
tunity to scan his face. He was plainly dressed in 
black, with a red fez on his head. His face looked 
unpleasant, unwholesome, unhappy and unreliable. 
This is the man whom an American writer has 
called " plucky," but whose pluck will be remem- 
bered in history as consisting in sending a sword of 
merit to the governor who ordered the massacre of 
helpless, unarmed men, women and children. 

The Turk does not impress travellers with favor. 
He never drinks, but makes up for it in other ways. 
He is as regular in his prayers as a summer boarder 
at meals, falling upon his knees at any time. Our 
boatman on the Lake of Galilee turned his face 
toward Mecca, dropped upon the sand in full view 
of all us " infidels," and was not disconcerted in 
the least. They carry beads in their hands and are 
incessantly fingering them. I asked my dragoman 
about it and he said, " It is better for a man to be 
thinking about Allah than to be thinking about 
you." This I admitted without argument, but 
later, when I saw a Mussulman deeply interested in 
a street fight without interruption of his bead-work, 
I concluded that Orientals must be troubled with the 
same complaint as Americans, to wit, wandering of 
thought in prayer. 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

What is the future of this Turkish Empire? The 
hand of death is certainly upon it. Within a cen- 
tury their territory in Europe has shrunk from two 
hundred and thirty thousand square miles to sixty 
thousand. Her European population has dropped 
from twenty millions to five. It is a government 
that ought to die, a government of suspicion, of es- 
pionage, of treachery. The last Sultan, it is said, 
committed suicide; more probably it was " an as- 
sisted fate." The present Sultan's brother is called 
insane, convenient excuse for confining him in an 
asylum. He reigns by intrigue and amid secret 
factions. He wrings the life-blood from his people 
by the most demoralizing system of taxation on 
earth. The tree is taxed whether it is bearing or 
not, so that in Syria discouraged and frenzied 
farmers have been known to cut down the olive 
grove in sheer desperation rather than be taxed into 
bankruptcy. The court lives in splendor, the peo- 
ple strangle with the mailed hand upon the throat. 
Yet this is the sovereign whose official title is 
" Abdul Hamid, the Beloved Sultan of Sultans, 
Emperor of Emperors; the Shadow of God upon 
Earth; Brother of the Sun; Dispenser of Crowns to 
Those who sit upon Thrones ; Sovereign of Constan- 
tinople and the great city of Brousa, as well as of 
Damascus, which is the Scent of Paradise; King of 
Kings, whose Army is the Asylum of Victory; at 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

the Foot of "Whose Throne is Justice and the Refuge 
of the World." Such is his official name, his real 
name is The Sick Man of the East. Yet his sick- 
ness is discouragingly slow, reminding one of that 
sick man of the west, whose wife remarked so 
naively, " I do wish the old man would get well or 
something." The Sultan is unable to get well, he 
might truly repeat the grim jest of George the 
Third, " Excuse me for being so long in dying." 
He is living to-day upon the jealousies of Europe. 
He is detested by all, but is permitted to hold his 
property on sufferance, rather than that the Powers 
should face the problem of a post mortem division 
of his estate. Meanwhile Russia has her sleepless 
eye on his lovely capital, and whispers to herself, 
" I bide my time." 



XVII 
THE ISLES OF GEEECE 

GEEECE is enveloped by nature with a robe 
of beauty. The traveller is held spell- 
bound with " the isles of Greece, the isles 
of Greece," (a repetition that accentuates their 
number and variety), long before he sets foot upon 
her shores. They are emeralds and sapphires set 
in a jasper sea. Greece is enveloped also with a 
robe of artistic glory. Though but half as large as 
the State of Kew York, she occupies, in the eyes of 
the civilized world, a space outspanning empires. 
Eeflections like these crowded upon us, as we sailed 
up the lovely Gulf of JEgina, landing at Piraeus, 
the port of Athens, originally selected by Themis- 
tocles. 

Athens, " the city of the violet crown," is six 
miles away, lying upon a plain out of which rise 
several abrupt rocky hills. On either side of the 
plain stand up the mountains, not unlike the Berk- 
shires around Stockbridge. The one nearest the 

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city is called Hymettus, famous for its honey. Its 
next-door neighbor is Pentelicus, " of the marble 
heart." From the head of Pericles, from the hand 
of Phidias, from the heart of Pentelicus was created 
the Parthenon, a quartette of noble Ps. One of the 
rocky heights alluded to rises out of the very heart 
of the city; it is the Acropolis, " the High City," 
originally the castle of defence, but subsequently de- 
veloped into the most famous place of architecture 
the world over. Three of its sides are perpendicular, 
while the fourth is reinforced by masonry, including 
a wonderful flight of marble steps. As the city 
grew in power and wealth, the Acropolis came to be 
used exclusively for art and worship. Here the 
great temples were reared, and, like the capitol at 
Hartford, their sculptural beauty is enhanced by 
being set upon a hill. Here was erected, also, the 
gold and ivory statue of Athena, one of the wonders 
of the world, a masterpiece of Phidias, himself the 
master of masters. The remains of several grand 
structures are still observable. They have been 
shattered by earthquake and bombshell, been plun- 
dered by avarice and hatred, but they still show, 
nevertheless, their noble ideal, even as fallen hu- 
manity reflects the image of God. 

Visitors drive to the Acropolis first, they drive to 
it last. They visit it by moonlight, when from out 
its shadows steal the figures of a wondrous past. 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

For great men have leaned against the bases of 
those motionless shafts. " Other ages have had 
their bright particular stars; the age of Pericles is 
the Milky "Way of Great Men." From the Acrop- 
olis one gains also a bird's-eye view of the city. 
2sTew Athens lies around Old Athens, as if encom- 
passing and sheltering her from harm. It reminds 
one of the saying, 

"Yestreen 1 saw the new moon 
With the old moon in her arms." 

The Athens of to-day is a town to which the word 
" hustling " may be applied. The streets are full 
of shops and shoppers. The city is laid out regu- 
larly in squares, and is handsomely built of marble. 
The public buildings are classically beautiful, with 
the exception of the Palace, which is a White House 
more democratic in appearance than the one at 
Washington. The bane of the city is its dust, which 
is only partially alleviated by sprinkling. The 
town has a thrifty air, in spite of its paper currency 
with gold at a premium of sixty-five. 

The Athenians of St. Paul's day were inquisitive 
and newsy; they are so still, spending much time in 
the cafes, either to hear or to tell some new thing. 
They are all politicians and " throng the public 
squares until two A. M., sipping coffee and ham- 
mering the table with the fist. The minute details 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

of the legislature are gone into like the campaigns 
of Hannibal. Did the Prime Minister presume to 
tack on to the Sundry Civil List the cost of a saddle 
for the Chamberlain's boy? If so, it was a " rider," 
and not to be borne. " Go to, ye Athenians; let us 
rally as at Marathon, and vote it down ! " 

The Greeks pride themselves on their democracy; 
they regard us Americans as being in a promising 
way, but hold that for the real Simon-pure, Andrew 
Jackson article, one must look to them alone. They 
have a king, to be sure, but they go to see him with 
trousers in boots, clap him on the back, and call him 
" George." They spell elections with a double X, 
they are so absorbing. A friend of mine was pres- 
ent at the last mayoralty contest, and stated that 
they had torch-light processions and serenades for 
ten nights thereafter. They vote a white ballot for 
their candidate, and, following the ancient custom, 
a black ballot against every opposing candidate, 
with the result that, in a recent city election, each 
freeman voted a hundred and ten times. They 
vote by means of a white or black bean, and become 
so expert in the matter, that " not to know beans," 
is synonymous with dense Boeotian stupidity. The 
man who told me all this, once took a prize for truth- 
fulness during the school year. 

The Greeks are natural traders and one sees their 
signs all over the East. Their names generally end 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

in the syllable " eion " ; we counted a hundred, for 
example, in one street and then closed the poll. 
Eion appears to be the termination meaning place, 
like the Latin " ium," and is resorted to for every 
kind of a noun. Hotel is " xenodecheion," that is 
" place of receiving strangers." The final n is not 
pronounced, and almost every vowel and diphthong 
in the language is sounded like ee in feet. The 
Greeks are thrifty. The major part of the real es- 
tate in Cairo, for instance, is in their hands; so is the 
banking business of the Orient. The world has al- 
ways had a sentimental affection for Greece, of 
which Lord Byron's was a conspicuous example. 
Subscriptions for Greek Independence were taken 
in our colleges seventy years ago, and some of the 
cannon procured thereby were cast in Salisbury, 
Conn. The reason for this romantic attachment 
lies almost wholly in their past. The modern Greeks 
are not much different from the rest of us, as Byron 
at length discovered; but they are interesting, and 
probably worth all the blood and treasure their in- 
dependence cost. 

The land is beautiful in itself, and ever will be. 
The Yale of Tempe is regarded as the most beauti- 
ful in the world. The isle of Corfu seemed to me, 
on the whole, the fairest spot my eyes feasted upon 
in all my journey. The hills are always strong and 
graceful, with an added charm of historical asso- 
ciation ; the sea gleams everywhere, for the coast of 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

Greece is more indented even than the coast of 
Maine. The forests around Athens have been sac- 
rificed too much, so that the rainfall is scanty, and 
the limestone shows through the herbage too glar- 
ingly. But tree-planting has begun again and some 
Order of Foresters ought to do for the country a 
work of grace. 

One glorious afternoon we sailed in a small boat 
through the Straits of Salamis, a few miles only 
from the city. Upon the mainland opposite is the 
sharp hill recalling so vividly the famous incident, 

A king sat on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 
And ships by thousands lay below, 

And men in nations — all were his. 

The battle of Salamis was won by faith, the faith 
of one man. Themistocles was alone in his opinion 
that the Greek fleet was able to cope with the Per- 
sian crush. He could not gain the consent of the 
majority of sea captains, but managed to delay the 
retreat, until their fleet was surrounded and battle 
was inevitable. There before us was the coast 
where the wives and daughters of Athens came out 
to view; beneath our keel were the waters that were 
once lashed with the fury of oars, or tinged with the 
blood of Asia, " making the green one red." There 
were the bays where the contestants were jammed in 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

one mass or drifted helplessly apart. The Persian 
fleet far outnumbered the little Athenian flotilla, 
but were inferior to them in oarsmanship and strik- 
ing power. The battle was a case of the sword-fish 
versus the whale, which has but one ending. The 
judgment, the courage, the faith of Themistocles 
were justified, and all the world wondered. The 
only real man on the Persian side was a woman. 
The rest fled east, fled west, or leaped into the sea 
and enriched the fisheries of Attica. The king, 
who was called early in order to enjoy the annihi- 
lation of his enemies, went to bed without the sight. 
But for Athens the day ended gloriously. Then 
was their mouth filled with laughter and their 
tongue with singing. Did not one chase a thousand, 
and two put ten thousand to flight? It was an inci- 
dent after the order of David and Goliath, whose 
very disproportion captivates the world's heart. 

Another day we climbed Pentelicus, the moun- 
tain from which Athens drew her supply of exqui- 
site marble. It was a hard, stiff climb, involving 
twelve miles of effort. More than once I sighed 
for the volume in my library entitled, " Helps over 
hard places." But the summit, reached at three 
o'clock, was rewarding. We looked directly down 
upon a famous plain, 

The mountains look on Marathon, 
And Marathon looks on the sea. 

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AXD OTHER LEAVES 

Here occurred another of those unequal contests, 
eleven thousand against a hundred and ten thou- 
sand, which ended in favor of " the little dog 
in the fight." The plain of Marathon is not large, 
perhaps a mile and a half by five. It is girt by a 
lovely circular bay. At the farthest point from the 
sea is a little bend where the Athenians waited un- 
til Miltiades saw the Persian cavalry embark. Off 
they sailed, supposing their presence would be un- 
necessary in such an insignificant skirmish. Then 
Miltiades permitted himself a smile, and ordered 
the charge. The Persians were driven into a mo- 
rass, somewhat as Barak drove the hosts of Sisera 
into the swamp of the Kishon. The Greeks lost 
only one hundred and ninety-two men, who lie 
buried in a little mound on the plain, but their op- 
ponents lost so many whole regiments that the place 
is called in history " the Persians' grave." 

The hills of Greece are full of shrines, temples, 
statues — all in ruins. But they are sufficient to at- 
tract the artists and scholars of all countries. These 
battered columns are studied with a care that is 
not always given to human life itself. They copied 
them in the days of the Csesars, they copy them in 
the days of President McKinley and Kaiser Wil- 
helm. 

"We made a journey to Corinth by a " Shore 
Line " railway, fifty-eight miles from Athens, and 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

beautiful all the way. Here on a narrow isthmus, 
between two frequented seas, a natural site for a 
metropolis, grew up a populous and wealthy city, 
which, after a checkered career, had taken on new 
life and luxury in St. Paul's day. It was interesting 
to look on those mountains and graceful shores, as 
through the eyes of the apostle, for they were all 
that remained of his day, save the few columns of 
a resurrected temple. Here he remained a full 
year and a half, the longest period he spent in any 
one place, under the Divine assurance, " I have 
much people in this city." Here he developed the 
pastoral heart, which shows so tenderly in his two 
letters to the Corinthian church. They were a most 
unpromising lot of church members, according to 
our standards, but, nevertheless, they were consid- 
ered worthy to receive the two masterpieces of the 
great apostle, the Thirteenth Chapter of First Co- 
rinthians and the sublime passage on the Resurrec- 
tion. 

A canal has been cut across the isthmus, three 
and a half miles long, which saves two hundred and 
fifty miles of sea voyage. We crossed it by rail- 
road, and I was so much interested in it, that I re- 
solved to walk back and get a snap of the camera at 
it. It seemed to me to be about half a mile from the 
station, and I allowed three-quarters of an hour for it. 
It turned out to be a mile and a half away. In the 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

very act of taking it, I was paralyzed to see my train 
for Patras just crossing the bridge! I must make 
up the return distance in the time it would take the 
train to run a mile and a half, plus its wait at the 
station. Then I girded up my loins and ran. I 
thought of Cushi and Ahimaaz, and of the messen- 
gers that ran from Thermopylae to Athens, and beat 
all four. The heat had expanded the road, but I 
made up the difference. Men stopped their work 
in the field, and women brought their children to 
the doorway to see me run. I hailed an engine in 
passing and offered the engineer a king's ransom, 
if he would take me to the station, but he preferred 
to see me run. I made the last lap just as the 
guard's horn tooted. When the local reporter writes 
up that run, he can fill a Corinthian column. 

All that afternoon we rode by rail along the 
southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth. The penin- 
sula is the most fertile part of Greece. It was beau- 
tifully green with wheat fields, olive orchards and 
vineyards. We saw old Mount Parnassus and many 
other famous heights, some of them snow clad. By 
night we reached Patras, the second port in the king- 
dom, but of no special interest artistically. Not far 
from here, across the gulf, is Missolonghi, where 
Byron breathed his last. 

The next day we journeyed on west and south to 
Olympia, where the famous games were celebrated 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

for a thousand years of history. The Germans have 
expended $300,000 here in excavation, and have 
unearthed the Temple of Zeus and the race-course. 
They are situated at the junction of two small rivers. 
The hills border the plain, reminding me of 
Cornwall, my neighboring town. But the greatest 
find of all was the Hermes of Praxiteles, a statue 
of the god playing with a little child held on his 
left arm. This sculpture is regarded by many as 
the finest work in marble on earth, and it is claimed 
that it alone is sufficient compensation for the 
money spent in excavation. While it is not one of 
the masterpieces of Praxiteles, as described by the 
ancients, still it is far and away ahead of all things 
modern in stone. A mantle falls from his shoulder, 
and the very texture of the folds is so well brought 
out that the difference between it and the exquisite 
skin is clearly marked. When a photograph was 
shown to a great German scholar, he was so illu- 
sioned as to exclaim, " What made the photographer 
put in that cloth? " The face is very beautiful, 
but I was Philistine enough to ask myself, " After 
all, does it not lack soul? " Hermes was looking 
away from the child, not at him, which was a point 
against him at the start. Handsome as he was, he 
looked to be fully capable of breaking a woman's 
heart, and then of inquiring what was to be had for 
dinner. The marble may have been Pentelic; it 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

was certainly not angelic. The man who owned that 
face may have merited the praise of Absalom, 
" from the sole of his foot even to the crown of 
his head there was no blemish in him; " but he 
never could have uttered the words of one who, 
though " his bodily presence was weak," could say, 
" Neither count I my life dear unto myself." 

The Island of Corfu is " the farthest north " of 
Greece, and one of the most beautiful spots in cre- 
ation. We rounded the picturesque old castle early 
one morning and came to anchor off the clean and 
sightly town. It was Easter Day. The Greek and 
Gregorian calendars have no dealings with each 
other, so that the Eastern and Western churches 
observe separate days. We had attended an Easter 
service in the English church of Athens the previous 
Sunday, we now followed it by attending the Greek 
Church Easter service to-day! The functionary- 
ushered us quite up into the chancel, within a yard, 
in fact, of a chanting priest blessed with lusty lungs. 
There was much monotoning of sentences, much 
burning of incense, and more bowing down to holy 
bones than I am accustomed to, but I endeavored to 
worship with them, and was rewarded, at length, 
by hearing the Eirst Chapter of John read aloud in 
Greek, which was the most reverential, impressive, 
and stillest part of the whole service. The well- 
worn Bible was kissed by an eager throng, and 

147 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

the communion cup, containing the bread and wine 
mixed as a sop, was given to a number, including an 
infant, who rebelled with clamor and had to be con- 
verted by force of arms. 

The Empress of Austria built a most beautiful 
palace in this isle, reminding one of Coleridge's 
lines, 

In Xenadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree. 

It is situated on the mountain side overlooking the 
Adriatic, a castle by the sea. Gardens vie with 
gardens and bowers with bowers, to make it an 
earthly paradise. It is called, " Achilleion," after 
the Greek hero. A large fresco in the hall repre- 
sents the victorious combatant in the act of drag- 
ging Hector, slain, around the walls of Troy. In 
the garden is its counterpart, a statue of the victor 
vanquished, of Achilles wounded to death, pluck- 
ing the poisoned arrow from his heel. Did the Em- 
press, I wonder, as she surveyed that statue in the 
midst of her terraced garden, have suspicion of the 
danger that lurked in her own pathway? The di- 
vinity that doth hedge a king does not keep at bay 
the hand of an assassin. The Empress was stricken 
in the height of her prosperity, and the iron entered 
into her soul. Achilleion is now empty, and strang- 
ers only enjoy its surpassing loveliness. 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

This was our last glimpse of the isles of Greece. 
The garden, the castle, the peak, the mountain, suc- 
cessively sank into the Adriatic, and the image was 
effaced from the eye to be printed upon the memory. 

Clime of the unforgotten brave ! 
Whose land from plain to mountain cave 
Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave. 



XVIII 
ITALY 

ITALY from Brindisi to Naples is a garden. 
Everything was in bloom and the fields 
looked as fair as art and nature could make 
them. " Thy very weeds are beautiful; thy wastes 
more rich than other climes' fertility." The Apen- 
nines make a noble backbone for the peninsula, 
and a grand background for many a frowning castle 
and smiling farm. But Italy has an Old Man of the 
Sea about the neck, his name is Taxation. Taxes 
devour everything, levied in most ingenious ways, 
tax following tax. An Italian lady told me that 
first they raised the tax on water, then they de- 
manded that the quantity taken should be increased. 
Water falls in Italy, but the tax on water, never! 
There is a tax upon the railway ticket, and on top 
of that a " sur-tax." " That which the palmer 
worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that 
which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm 
eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

hath the caterpillar eaten." Italy might be one of 
the richest of lands in agriculture, as she is in art, 
but her time is not yet. 

Naples once more cast her magic spell over us, 
N aples that loves her matchless site so well as to be 
constantly getting as much as possible of that site 
upon her person. Naples is dirty, but gay. They 
can live on next to nothing and sing glees over it. 
They eat everything that grows on earth, and the 
donkeys eat everything that grows beneath the 
earth. The stable feed of the city is roots. 

The bay shone with all its queenly beauty, when 
we steamed down to the rocks of Capri. Capri 
forms one of the protecting barriers of the bay. The 
diver is on hand ready to bring up coppers cast into 
the sea. You need not fear that the money will be 
lost; in spite of his tardy start and seeming deliber- 
ation, he invariably returns, like Peter's fish, with 
the coin in his mouth. Capri is beautiful in itself, 
but its famous feature is the " Blue Grotto." This 
is a cave which is entered at the sea level, and then 
only in still water. The entrance is very narrow 
and low, so that passengers need to lie down in the 
bottom of the boat. But being in, the spectator sees 
one of the sights of his life. The water is all blue, 
like the pavement of sapphire, " as the body of 
heaven in his clearness." It has a phosphorescent 
effect, also, so that everything breaking the sur- 
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A LEAVE OP ABSENCE 

face looks like molten silver seen through blue glass. 
Boys are wont to dive for visitors in order to en- 
hance the effect. One placing the palm beneath 
the water reminded us of the title, " Otto of the 
Silver Hand." The same is a parable, and teaches 
us that all the blues in life may have their silver 
lining. 

We spent the night at Sorrento. It is considered 
one of the Edens of earth; flavored with a spice of 
Athens; for, while it is a bower of roses set by the 
sea, it is also the home of literature and romance. 
Here Torquato Tasso was born, here Lamartine 
found his Graziella, here was the scene of " Agnes 
of Sorrento," and here Marion Crawford has writ- 
ten many of his books. It is a rare delight to sit 
out on the cliff, enjoying the scent of the rose, the 
murmur of the sea beneath, the stars in the Italian 
sky above, and old Vesuvius occasionally belching 
his lurid flame, 

" Earth's great heart in palpitation, 
Lava blood in circulation ! " 

The day following we drove for fifteen miles to 
Pompeii upon a highway built on the edge of the 
cliff, protected from its precipice by a low stone 
wall. On the right side crags, castles, and courts; 
on the left side shrubbery, scenery, the sea ; on both 
sides inspiration! 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

A cat may look at a king, and so may an Ameri- 
can. The King in question was the Sovereign of 
Italy. It was a great spectacle. Their Majesties 
came to town in order to open an Hygienic Exposi- 
tion, and all Naples went forth to welcome them. 
Humbert is popular in the city, for here he laid his 
crown aside, girded himself with a towel and did 
wash the hands and feet of the plague-stricken. 
Royalty never endears itself so well to its people 
as where it illustrates in a practical way the motto 
of the Prince of Wales, " Ich dien." My niece, 
the wife of an Italian officer, and I drove literally 
" from pillar to post," in the vain attempt to get a 
stand. At every point we were waived imperiously 
away, for O ! it gives a man on a police force or a 
head waiter in a busy restaurant such exquisite 
pleasure to be " dress'd in a little brief authority." 
At length we found a stand near the palace. The 
crowd was a great study. It was of all ages and 
ranks, all eager, all satisfied, for all felt that there 
was enough of the king to go around. We had a 
long wait, for kings belong to " the leisure class," 
and must not be hurried. It is not always true, it 
seems, that " the King's business requireth haste." 
King Umberto and Queen Margherita, at length, 
drove by. The king inherits a moustache from his 
father that is " fierce as ten furies," but, as a matter 
of fact, he is a very mild and humane man. His 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

eyes rove from side to side, as if he were on the out- 
look for an assassin. The queen is noted for her 
smile, and bows with a grace that turns the heart of 
Italy from brooding over taxes to hurrahing for the 
house of Savoy. After a while the royal party re- 
appeared from the interior, coming out upon the 
balcony facing the square. But not for long, mind 
you, for royalty knows better than to. cheapen it- 
self. The king business has to many people a great 
glamor, but his is not a life to be envied by any 
American sovereign. 



Since writing the above paragraph in the origi- 
nal journal, the civilized world has been shocked 
by the assassination of the King of Italy. It is a 
disgrace to America that the plot was conceived on 
American shores. Humbert was a man who de- 
served better of his generation than a sharpened 
knife. Our suspicion as to the reason of his roving 
eyes was probably correct; he had a presentiment of 
lurking danger and " coming events cast their 
shadows before." His reign is over; a new one 
has begun. The king is dead; long live the king! 



XIX 
EOME 

WE left old Vesuvius in the act, as one mem- 
ber of our party expressed it, " of garg- 
ling his throat with a swallow of hot 
lava," and turned northward. We entered the 
Eternal City one glorious Italian day and immedi- 
ately drove around it. It is a place of four hundred 
thousand people, and is important as being, since 
1871, the capital of the kingdom. Its importance 
historically, artistically, ecclesiastically, cannot be 
measured. Eor Rome is in a class by itself. 
Modern Rome has wide streets in the newer portion, 
well paved and electrically lighted. The shops are 
extensive and attractive. I do not know of any 
place in Europe where general goods are as cheap, 
or where beautiful things are so many and varied. 
The very business signs are noteworthy for their 
artistic quality, usually made of glass with a black 
background. The streets are full of traffic and of a 
vast throng of sight-seers. We are here in the 
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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

height of the season, and, in addition, it is Holy 
Year, when the Pope receives a special visitation of 
pilgrims from all over the world. Many a banner 
of strange device has been brought here to be 
blessed by His Holiness, including some from North 
and South America. 

The seven hills of Kome are still traceable, but 
the wear of ages and the engineering of modern 
street-makers have despoiled them of their promi- 
nence. The yellow Tiber still winds gracefully 
through the city, but its volume is greatly dimin- 
ished, owing to the levelling of forests, and to-day 
it looks not larger than the Harlem, not as wide as 
the Connecticut. Its hue is muddier than the Mis- 
sissippi's at St. Louis, being more of a slate color 
than yellow. It contains nothing but small boats, 
though in the time of Caesar the vessels of the Medi- 
terranean used to unload at the city wharves. Ma- 
laria still infests the city, in parts, but has never 
invaded the Quirinal Hill, where our hotel is situ- 
ated. The old and the new blend wonderfully in 
Rome, all kinds of old, all kinds of new. The age 
of the Sabines and of the Caesars, the age of the 
Decline and Tall, the ages of the two hundred and 
sixty-three popes, the age of art and literature, and 
with them, too, the age of modern Italy and of the 
Roman Catholic Church of our time. You go into 
the splendid chapel commemorative of Pius Ninth, 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

and you are at once reminded that the arteries of 
Rome run into all parts of the world. For upon the 
walls are placed tiles bearing name after name of 
American cities not fifty years old. Rome is a city 
full of reminiscenses, classical, mediaeval, modern. 
One issues from its portals, as a traveller ex- 
pressed it, " feeling as if George Washington and 
Benjamin Franklin were boys of yesterday." It 
is not my purpose to give an extended account of 
Rome, or even of the impression its treasures 
stamped upon my mind. The task is beyond the 
scope of this modest volume. The bare mention of 
places and objects visited, without any comment 
on them, fill five pages of my note-book. I mention 
a few sample sights and experiences only. 

The church of St. Peter's is impressive in the 
extreme, although its vastness does not appeal to the 
spectator at first ; the dimensions are so well propor- 
tioned that the eye is misled. The great dome is 
one hundred and thirty-eight feet across, but one 
finds it difficult to believe that it is more than fifty. 
The floor space is said to contain eighteen thousand 
square yards; the next largest church in the world 
having but ten thousand, yet it is cut up so by 
massive columns and recesses that it is never 
seen in one field of vision. The roof is a mass of 
gold and decoration, but contains no such treas- 
ures in fresco as many other churches. There are 

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A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

endless statues and tombs of saints, many of the fig- 
ures being in violent action and with wrought-up 
expressions, lacking entirely the repose of Greek 
art. There was much hammering while I was 
there, owing to the erection of booths for coming 
fetes, which detracted much from the solemnity of 
the place. But, as being the central church of 
Roman Catholic Christendom, St. Peter's is won- 
derfully impressive. 

A more beautiful interior was that of St. Paul's 
Without the Walls, a vast church full of frescoes, 
mosaics, and carved work, whose " cohorts were 
gleaming with purple and gold." I asked the com- 
pany what adjective would best describe it, and we 
settled upon the word " splendid." ISTot in the 
school-girl sense of the word, but as derived from 
the old Roman " splendidus," " sun-shine-like." 

The Catacombs were of extraordinary interest, 
full of symbols of the Christian faith, the lamb and 
the Shepherd, the fish, the loaves and fishes to set 
forth the Communion, and, strange to say, the 
whale and Jonah, to set forth the Resurrection! 

The Forum, also, is full of memories and engages 
the deepest attention. It lies in a vale between the 
Palatine and Quirinal Hills. Originally it was 
marshy, but was subsequently drained. The Sab- 
ines dwelt on the Quirinal, the Latins on the Pala- 
tine, while the territory between became their trad- 

158 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

ing place. Here was the scene of the carrying off 
of the Sabine women. Afterward this spot became 
the meeting place for all Rome. The Senate, the 
populace met here, and great pages of history were 
enacted under its marbles. One of our party stood 
upon the little rostrum where Marc Antony made 
his captivating address over the dead body of 
Caesar. A companion snapped a picture of him 
standing thus on forbidden ground. A guard came 
by just as he leaped over the fence and stared hard 
and suspiciously at him. But he calmly gazed up 
into the sky, as if he were trying to think of a word, 
and assumed the expression of St. Cecilia. 

" And what shall I more say? for the time would 
fail me to tell " of the A^atican treasures, of the 
sibyls and angels of Raphael, of the carved stone 
and frescoes of Angelo, of the mosaics that combine 
infinite patience with matchless skill. O the won- 
der, the beauty, the stones that are here ! 

No visit to Rome is complete without seeing its 
central figure, the Pope. Leo XIII is the two hun- 
dred and sixty-third pope of the Roman Catholic 
Church, and as such is styled the Bishop of Rome, 
Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of Apostles, 
Highest Prelate of the Universal Church, Patriarch 
of the Occident, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan 
Archbishop of the Roman Province, and Sovereign 
of the Temporal Dominions of the Holy Roman 
159 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

Church. Furthermore, he calls himself, for polit- 
ical reasons, " the prisoner of the Vatican," refus- 
ing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the kingdom 
of Italy, and, with dignified consistency, refusing to 
touch the stipend accorded him by the government. 
The only opportunity open to us for seeing him 
was in connection with the reception of a pilgrim 
party in St. Peter's. In company with some fifteen 
thousand others, we went into the stately interior 
of the great church and waited for his arrival. We 
all stood up, with the exception of a few dignitaries 
who occupied " the seats of the mighty." It was 
a two hours' test of patience. At last, however, ex- 
citement began to kindle in one end of the great 
pavement and expectation was on tiptoe. First 
came a large number of robed and vested priests, 
then an army of banners representing societies from 
near and far. Last of all came the Pope himself, 
all in white, borne upon the shoulders of his ser- 
vants, on a frame containing a kind of throne. Oc- 
casionally he half -rose and gave the pontifical bene- 
diction, by extending the two fingers of his right 
hand. The Pope is a very aged man; he had just 
celebrated his ninetieth birthday on the 2d of 
March, and looked his full age. The old man's 
hand trembled visibly on the arm of the throne as 
it passed within a few feet of my eyes. His usual 
benevolent smile, which is the characteristic of his 

160 



AND OTHEB LEAVES 

countenance, was lacking, and he looked as if the 
occasion demanded and was receiving all his 
strength. But no man, however aged, could be in- 
sensible to the devotion and acclaim that greeted 
the pontiff from all parts of the great concourse, 
swelling into a roar as he approached nearer. Many 
were the cheers of " Viva il Papa ! " " Viva il 
Re ! " The enthusiasm was unmistakable and con- 
tagious, for that venerable figure represented to 
many millions the embodiment of heaven's rule up- 
on earth. The Pope and a Protestant minister dif- 
fer, and can agree to differ, as to the nature of his 
mission in the world; but, apart from the theologi- 
cal separatrix, I felt myself in sympathy, as a man, 
with the respect which his amiable character in- 
spired. Nor did I detract anything from the loyal- 
ty, tear-eyed, and broken-voiced loyalty, which he 
enjoyed on that occasion; and as Leo the Xlllth 
had given me his benediction, I gave him mine in 
return. 



XX 

FLORENCE AND MILAN 

FLORENCE is the art-lover's Paradise, as it 
is also The Lily of the Arno. The moun- 
tains hover about it as if to guard a treas- 
ure, and the yellow Arno picks her way daintily 
through it, as if reluctant to glide past a garden of 
Eden. History and romance have made their home 
here. In the square, where traffic is now so heed- 
less, a solemn hush once fell upon an awe-stricken 
multitude, when Savonarola, the Reformer before 
the Reformation, was burned for being so right in 
an age that was itself so wrong. In yonder little 
chapel Michael Angelo had his nose broken by a 
fellow-student in a quarrel, and what was written 
on his visage was written. Angelo could make an 
angel's face, but could not make a human nose. 
There, too, is the Ponte Vecchio, where Tito Me- 
lema was represented as leaping into the Arno, 
escaping from the Assassins only to fall into the 
fateful hands of Baldassarre, the inexorable. " As 

162 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him: 
or went into the house and leaned his hand on the 
wall, and a serpent bit him." 

The arts have taken root in Florence as nowhere 
else in the world; they flourish like the green-bay 
tree and bear twelve manner of fruits to the pleas- 
ing of nations. In the Pitti Palace, for example, is 
a small collection of only five hundred paintings, 
no one of which is less than a gem, and some of 
which are counted among the Kohinoors and Or- 
loffs of art. In the Uftizi Palace are still more. 
What a constellation of multifarious genius has con- 
centrated on this single city! "With its fortunes 
are linked the names of Dante, Petrarch, Alfieri, 
Angelo, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, " the faultless 
painter," Giotto; while in other fields of human 
achievement are counted Lorenzo de Medici, Gali- 
leo, Da Yinci, Macchiavelli, " the star called 
Wormwood," and Savonarola, " the angel standing 
in the sun." 

Milan is the financial capital of Italy and the 
most prosperous city in the kingdom. Here in La 
Scala many of the great operas have been produced, 
backed by the capital necessary for their setting. 
Industries as well as banks find their homes in this 
northern metropolis. But it is not the vault or the 
cogged wheel that makes Milan famous; it is the 
chisel. For here is " the poem in stone," the Cathe- 
163 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

dral of Milan, the eighth wonder of the world. Its 
greatness lies not in its size, though it is second only 
to St. Peter's, nor in its general design. There are 
other Gothic churches. But it is the bewildering 
perfection of its multitudinous details. I passed 
into the dim religious light of the great interior, 
gauged its vaulted roof and massive columns, looked 
upon one after another of its giant windows, whose 
stained glass contained, not a picture here and there, 
but each of them one hundred and twelve Biblical 
scenes by count. Then I climbed the towers and 
walked upon the solid stone of the roof. There be- 
fore me appeared a forest of flying arches and 
curved abutments ; spires and pinnacles cut the sky- 
line like a grove, each one of them a series of as- 
cending stories, containing countless niches, each 
niche sheltering a saint, decreasing in number and 
size, as the eye followed it skyward, the intervals 
filled with carved lace-work, the whole crowned 
with some saintly figure still pointing upward into 
the blue. Nor do I expect to see the like of that 
wonder till I see the City whose stones begin with 
jasper and end with amethyst. 

In leaving Italy behind me, I am impelled to say 
something on art. Many Americans approach the 
subject gingerly and with a secret misgiving as to 
their really " getting anything out of it." The en- 
joyment of art does not depend upon, though it is 

164 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

doubtless enhanced by, technical training. No- 
body has to go to college in order to enjoy the sunset 
or to find delight in the Sistine Madonna. The ap- 
preciation of fine things is dependent on a quality 
within us that is sometimes called " soul." " What 
shall a man give in exchange for his soul ?" With- 
out it, Europe is simply a succession of hotels; with 
it, it is a panorama of delights, including the " glory 
that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome." 

People diff er as to soul. It was said of Icarus that 
he had come down from Olympus after supping 
with the Gods, and remembered only the pattern 
of the table-cloth. It is the same with some who 
have returned from Europe. After Mozart had 
seen the mountain, he would seat himself before 
his instrument, play an exquisite score and exclaim, 
" That is what the mountain said to me! " Another 
is no more affected by the mountain than if his 
heart were named Cephas, " which is by interpreta- 
tion a stone." Ruskin thought that there was as 
much artistic quality born into the world to-day as 
ever, but that human energies were diverted into 
other channels by circumstance. On this principle 
one might explain the charge peculiarly brought 
against Americans, that they are lacking in soul. 
I do not believe it is true as to their natural suscepti- 
bility; but, living as they do where business is para- 
mount, and art is still a luxury, their hour is not 

165 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

yet come. America is not an Undine, who had no 
soul : she is a Sleeping Princess. The future chroni- 
cler will yet describe a magic awakening: and it 
will then be said, The Princess rose, the Palace 
stirred, 

"And sixty feet the fountain leapt." 

Sometimes the boiling spring of artistic enthus- 
iasm boils over. I met a bevy of girls in the Vati- 
can, who raved over the Apollo Belvidere just seen, 
and raved in italics. But, to their confusion of 
face, it turned out to be another man ! They were 
not the only ones who had their ecstasies in the 
wrong place. " This is not the tomb of Washing- 
ton," said the gardener to the lady in tears, " his 
tomb is over yonder; this is the ice-house." Some- 
how to find that it is the ice-house gives one a chill. 

If asked what would help a traveller to cultivate 
soul, I would venture to mention two things. One 
of them is an educated guide. What one needs in 
Europe is not a courier or factotum, but a gentle- 
man of cultivated taste. A dragoman cannot be 
that. The one we had in Baalbec spoke several lan- 
guages, and English fluently. He turned out to be 
a rug buyer for a Chicago firm; but knew no more 
about history and architecture than a hen does about 
dentistry. Although Mr. Cranch contends that 

Soul to soul can never teach 
What unto itself is taught, 

166 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

I doubt it. I believe to a certain extent in the 
transmigration of souls, that is, in the power of one 
earnest and enthusiastic nature to impart itself to 
others. When, in his novitiate, one enters a gallery 
it seems to him like Jericho of old, " straitly shut 
up." He says with David, " Who will lead me into 
the strong city? " Well, Baedeker will do some- 
thing for you, by virtue of eye-strain and much 
study, that is a weariness to the flesh ; but a cultured 
conductor will do more, will introduce us to more 
delights in half an hour than we would find out for 
ourselves, " from morn to noon, from noon to dewy 
eve, a summer's day." 

And now I am going to make bold to mention 
another help. And I will do so under the maxim 
of " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it 
are the issues of life." Such issues as deep feeling, 
reverence, nobility of thought, are not produced by 
letters of credit in four figures, nor by high-sound- 
ing hotels, though they are called, as in Naples, 
" The Grand Splendid." Outward circumstances 
have little to do with " spirits touched to fine is- 
sues." When a person born and blessed with " a 
New England conscience " goes about Italy break- 
ing the Fourth Commandment as badly as Moses 
broke the Ten, gives his religion a vacation from 
Sandy Hook to Sandy Hook, he is apt to suffer from 
it. A troubled conscience is not a good travelling 
companion. It accounts for some of the disappoint- 
167 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

ment experienced by certain tourists. But more 
than that, in going forth to see the heavenliest, most 
inspiring things in the world, it is not sensible to 
begin by laying away in a napkin the highest and 
most sensitive part of our being, the religious nat- 
ure. This statement, I am aware, comes danger- 
ously near to preaching, but it is the plain unvar- 
nished truth! In fine, I would amend the proverb 
of St. Ambrose so as to read for every American 
Christian, 

Do in Rome 

As you would at home. 



XXI 

TRAVELLING ACROSS EUROPE 



M 



Y flight took me northward still, through 
the mountains and lakes of Switzerland. 
It is the land of giant heights and gla- 
ciers; the land, also, of William Tell and liberty. 
On that spot he shot the apple, on this he leaped 
from the tyrant's boat, where is now reared a me- 
morial chapel. It is the land, also, of Billy the goat, 
and of Silly the kid, both of whom are now dis- 
porting themselves in a back yard containing fifty 
cents worth of grass, upheld by a stone wall worth 
five hundred dollars. 

The Swiss are great engineers and stone-masons. 
They will cut a stone where we would scarcely cut 
a stick. Everywhere the posts by the wayside were 
of hewn stone. Their roads are models. The Swiss 
seem to have heard and adopted Napoleon's dictum, 
" Gentlemen, there shall be no Alps." The Alps 
do not trouble them at all. They can find a way or 
make one, where a chamois would give it up. One 

169 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

of their great highways is the St. Gotthard. This 
is the same name as Goddard, but the American 
branch has never been sainted. The route contains 
scores of tunnels, the longest of which is nine miles 
in length. It took our train seventeen minutes to 
run through it. The tunnel passes under a village 
a thousand feet above it, and under a mountain-lake 
three thousand feet overhead. It is twenty-six feet 
wide, twenty high, and cost twelve million dollars 
to build. The most remarkable feature of the 
route is the occurrence of spiral tunnels, which run 
into the heart of a mountain, turn about and emerge 
at the same place only higher. This parable 
teaches that it is worth while going a great ways 
around for the sake of getting a little nearer heaven. 
At five o'clock we rolled into the small but beau- 
tiful city of Lucerne. It lies on the Lake of the 
Tour Cantons over against Mount Pilatus, where, 
legend asserts, the ex-governor of Judea committed 
suicide. On a huge rock in the heart of the city 
Thorwaldsen has carved a magnificent lion. He is 
represented in the article of death, a spear protrud- 
ing from his side. It is a memorial of the Swiss 
Guard, who, while heroically defending their trust, 
were killed to a man, at the storming of the Tuile- 
ries in 1792. The town is well built and has a 
thrifty air. The very trolley cars are works of art, 
being handsomely tinted in white and blue. As to 

170 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

Swiss hotels, they are famous the world over for ex- 
quisite neatness and daintiness of fare. Every 
traveller in Switzerland is like Kubla Khan, 

"For he on honey-dew hath fed, 
And drunk the milk of Paradise." 

However, this very rarity emphasizes a general 
experience in European travel that needs to be re- 
membered. The way through the Continent is no 
primrose path of dalliance. As a rule, trains do not 
run on schedule time, compartments are frequently 
full before you approach, and are constantly pre- 
senting that arithmetical poser, " Ten into eight 
you can't." Baggage, or " bagages" as they call 
it, is continually losing itself more effectually than 
the " Babes in the Wood." Landlords, like the 
King in Hamlet, " can smile and smile, and be a 
villain." Guides are very wont to exhibit a camel 
of promise to a gnat of performance. Consequently, 
philosophy is to the average traveller a more useful 
article than an umbrella in Scotland. No tourist 
should ever be, as the Greek professor would say, 
" anarthrous, that is, without the article." As an in- 
stance of " the real article," I met a jolly English- 
man on top of a stage-coach. 

" How are you doing to-day? " inquired his 
friend. " Eirst-rate," responded His Heartiness. 

" Thought I saw you limping this morning." 
171 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

" Yes, you did. Got a blister on my right foot 
this morning; but got another one on my left this 
afternoon; so now I am all right." 

Nevertheless, there is never sufficient philosophy 
in a party to go around. It is noticeable that a man 
may be a Ph.D., and yet not have philosophy enough 
to eat a cold meal without heat. On the other 
hand, I have known a man to be cheated in get- 
ting change for a coin (which always tries the mettle 
of a man), cheated out of half a shilling, mind you, 
and, instead of grumbling, he would " sing a song 
of sixpence." Dickens might call it " the carol 
philosophy." I met, once, a Doctor of Divinity, 
who had travelled from Land's End to the jumping- 
off place. His grumbling made everybody miser- 
able who came within the sphere of his influence, 
while his very smile was enough to turn the milk 
of human kindness into bonnyclabber. In con- 
trast with His Reverence, I saw a young wo- 
man on the English Channel, the sea running- 
high, the wind half a gale, her digestion in active 
rebellion ; but she tied her hat upon her head with a 
double-bow knot, faced the elements like Storm 
King, and held her position on deck like the Guards 
at Waterloo. 

The next day after Lucerne I took a still longer 
flight of twenty hours northwesterly, bade good-by 
to the peaks of Switzerland, crossed the frontier, 

172 



AND OTHEE LEAVES 

where I was searched for brandy and diamonds, 
passed Belf ort, the strongest of French strongholds, 
sped over fields of knee-high grain and through 
orchards all a-bloom, and finally entered the great 
Trench capital, that had challenged all the world 
to " come on," promising to each comer a fair show. 



XXII 
PARIS THE GAY AND THE EAIR 

PARIS the modern Babylon! The Athens of 
to-day! The city of gayety and tragedy, 
that draws all the world to itself for amuse- 
ment, that leads all other places in the number of its 
suicides. It is the city of the cafe and the boule- 
vard, of the perfect shrug and the perfect fit. La 
Parisienne can beat the world in dress; no one 
knows how, only that, like Anne of Shottery, " she 
hath a way." The Paris man knows how to extract 
the maximum quantum of pleasure out of the mini- 
mum quid of coin. It is a city " infinitely more 
picturesque than London," wrote Hawthorne. 
" Here I am caught again in this great gilded net," 
wrote De Amicis. It is a city that has always cast 
a spell over my countrymen, so that the proverb has 
come to be stated, " Good Americans, when they 
die, go to Paris." 

It was my fortune to spend ten days' in the heart 
of the city, in a quiet hotel within an enclosed 

174 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

court, near the Madeleine, and there steep myself 
in the life of the great capital. " Seeing life," has 
rather a shady meaning in these days, but I saw it, 
though I neither waded through the sewers of the 
city's vice on the one hand, nor dined with the Presi- 
dent on the other. I saw it as a looker-on in Yen- 
ice, not as an inmate of French homes. 

That last word furnishes my point of departure. 
In the French language, " there's no place like 
home." Certainly this is eminently true of Paris. 
The Parisian's home is the street. His sofa is the 
cab and omnibus; his dining-room the cafe. If you 
wish to find your friend Monsieur Crapaud, do not 
think of knocking him up where he gets his mail, 
at 26^ Street of the Armed Man, but drop in at The 
Black Cat, or The Horn of Gold, and you will find 
him. He is burning incense of nicotine before a 
paper shrine called Le Petit Journal. He is sip- 
ping anon a steaming cup of the national drink, 
which is flanked by three rhomboids of beet sugar. 
About him are his neighbors, often with wives and 
children. They are talking politics, art, business, 
gossip, with tongues geared to 95, talking with eye- 
brows, hands and shoulders. It has been remarked 
that a French woman has seventeen different ways 
of saying " No " ; but she has more ways than that 
of saying anything whatever with her dorsal, cervi- 
cal, and sterno-cleido-mastoid muscles. The cafe is 
175 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

brilliantly lighted, and resplendent with gilt and 
brass. Most likely your French friend is seated on 
the sidewalk in front of the cafe, and is enjoying 
the moving spectacle in the boulevard before him. 

The boulevard is the characteristic of the city. 
It is a broad avenue, generally lined with trees. 
Originally we are told, it meant a " bulwark " 
street, or one laid out upon the site of levelled forti- 
fications. It is now applied to any avenue, laid out, 
as it were, under martial law, without consultation 
of private right, but only of public good. The 
Third Napoleon had much to do with the making of 
these great arteries. He would spread a map of 
Paris before him, draw a line with his pen from 
point to point, and say, " Let there be a boulevard," 
and a boulevard was. The result is that Paris is 
sected and intersected with broad highways. You 
can go from somewhere to anywhere, without de- 
scribing two legs of a triangle. The city, in conse- 
quence, is light, airy and cheerful. The odd bits of 
land, left by streets cut at all angles, have been made 
into parks and parquettes. There are in Paris 
countless play spots, no plague spots. The city has 
no slums. Even in the workman's quarter there is 
no Whitechapel. Paris can let New York have 
" Five Points," and beat her badly then. 

One of the best ways to see Paris is to ride on 
the top of an omnibus. You go up by a winding 
stair and pay three cents for the privilege. The 

176 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

pace is not rapid, but you see everything, hear every- 
thing, more than your note-book will begin to hold. 
■You will see the irrepressible gayety of the nation. 
When Dora sang to David Copperfield her French 
Ballads, the prevailing impression left on the young 
man's mind was, " Whatever was the matter, we 
ought always to dance Ta-ra-la! Ta-ra-la! " That 
is precisely the way their spirit impresses the travel- 
ler to-day. They dance in the street; they are live- 
ly in their journeying; a French picnic is a carni- 
val of good spirits. Per contra, they are as extra- 
vagantly depressed in their grief or grievance. The 
Frenchman is never regretful, he is "desolated"; 
he does not feel tired, " he can no more." His 
remedy for the crisis is not " grit," it is suicide. 
This is said to be the gist of a large class of French 
novels: 

"Ion, I adore her ! " 
"Narcisse, I idolize her ! " 
" Ha, then we are rivals ?" 
"Yes, but still friends ! " 
"Aye, friends till death." 
" Let us tell her." 
They tell her. 
She says : 
" Let us all die ! " 
They buy six centimes worth of charcoal. 
They ignite it. 
They inhale it. 
They all die. 
Vive V amour ! 

177 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

Paris is the city of the red flag and of the white 
lie. The latter is never thought of as a sin; it is a 
politeness. "Why mention a disagreeable truth? 
Better keep it out of sight with your family skele- 
tons and poor relations." Such is French logic. 
Saxon readers of Victor Hugo, who has drawn some 
of the master characters of the world's literature, 
are nevertheless astonished to find that his heroes 
are all untruthful, and the white lie is made to con- 
tribute, as it were, a jewel to their crown. Bishop 
Myriel is a model of kindness and devotion, but 
when he takes a divine compassion on Valjean, pur- 
loiner of his silver candlesticks, he simply lies to the 
arresting officer, in order to save him. Valjean in 
the fifth book heroically places a hot iron on his arm, 
rather than betray Cosette's fortune; but, on his 
escape, does not hesitate to account for it by a lie. 
One is conscious of this national tendency all the 
while in Paris, not that it is any worse than Eng- 
lish bluntness or American sordidness, but it is 
there. But O! they are polite! You may make 
more blunders in conversation than Burgoyne did 
in his invasion, find it harder to get out of your 
sentence than Captain Kose to get out of Libby 
Prison; but they will tell you with a smooth face 
that your French is charmant and your accent par- 
fait. The white lie may leave a stain on the French- 
man's heart, but it does occasionally leave a good 
taste in the mouth! 

178 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

The French are witty. Gallic salt is next best 
to Attic salt. They never need to have the point 
explained to them. A graduate of the Conserva- 
toire told me that a French audience is very respon- 
sive, that one who has ever played or sang before 
them is like a tiger who has once tasted human 
blood, never satisfied with any other thereafter. 
The French have developed conversation, too, to 
its limit. The result is that French conversation is 
difficult to a foreigner, being full of idioms. French 
scientific writing, on the other hand, is exceedingly 
clear and simple. The reverse is true of the Ger- 
man, whose conversation is easy, but whose meta- 
physical writing is a compound of haze and maze, 
of Catacombs and Gordian Knots. 

With the art and architecture of Paris I am not 
now to deal. Any one can duplicate my mornings 
in the Louvre or afternoons in the Bastille and 
other monuments of history, by consulting Bae- 
deker or by following the Hare (Augustus, J. C), 
in his Walks in Paris. 

The peculiar feature of this year of grace (1900) 
in Paris was The Fair. It was to be the fin-de-siecle 
cap-sheaf, the pull-all-together of the French na- 
tion. Newspapers and parties agreed to bury the 
hatchet until it was over. It was to be the crowning 
feature of French glory, for which the nation made 
ready by modestly appropriating sixty-five per 
cent, of the entire space. Paris bonded itself for 

179 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

its financing, and removed mountains for its enlarge- 
ment. At least, the city tore down and moved away 
whole blocks to make room for the display. It was 
to be the sixteenth exposition of the century, the 
last, the best. Our own government appropriated 
$1,200,000; and I judge that Germany and Russia 
appropriated as much more. The city had the pres- 
tige of great previous successes. It lay near the 
great art centres of Europe, and tributary to dense 
centres of population. Nevertheless, though the 
vast undertaking will not be written down a failure, 
it cannot be written down a popular success. "When 
I saw it, the daily attendance was under a hundred 
thousand at eleven cents a ticket; when I saw the 
White City, the attendance hovered around half a 
million at fifty cents a head. 

In point of display, the goods gathered and ar- 
ticles set forth, the Exposition of 1900 certainly 
surpassed all that had gone before. It was a reve- 
lation of unsuspected manufacture to me, indeed, 
that Russia should bear the palm in pianos and 
musical instruments, that Germany should crowd 
America for first place in electrical appliances. But 
mere bulk of catalogue does not impress the mind. 
If one can see only a hundred thousand things in a 
given time, it makes no difference after that 
whether the list includes five millions or ten. 
"While the specialist undoubtedly noted a great ad- 

180 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

vance in his field in the exhibit of 1900 over that 
of 1893, I doubt if the tout ensemble impressed the 
general observer in any such degree as Chicago. 

The space itself was far less appropriate. It 
was a narrow ribbon of ground along the banks 
of the Seine, with irregular enlargements here and 
there. There were but few imposing buildings, as 
compared with the White City's many. There 
was no opportunity for landscape gardening, for 
lawn and shrubbery, for that magnificent Court 
of Honor; above all, there was no majestic Lake 
Michigan, flanking the creation of man with the 
creation of God. The Street of Nations had a 
huddled appearance; the United States' Building 
was within a fishing pole's length of its neighbor. 
The architecture did not impress itself upon eye 
and memory as did that splendid collection at Chi- 
cago. The White City has established a record 
which the world will be long in breaking. 

Several factors contributed to make the Exposi- 
tion flag. A protracted strike set the building back 
a half year. This incompleteness checked the in- 
flux of visitors at the start, and thereby the Fair 
lost its best advertisement. The visitor who goes 
home and tells the neighborhood about it makes 
ten men go where but one went before. The 
African and China wars also distracted public 
attention, most people being incapable of attend- 

181 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

ing to but one sensation at a time. Then it was 
" bad politics " to offend Great Britain at this junc- 
ture. Usually the British are great sight-seers, but 
it was considered bad form this year to accept hos- 
pitality from a nation that had caricatured Her Ma- 
jesty the Queen. Further, the Exposition had to 
pay the penalty of the Dreyfus incident. The Jew 
is no more popular in other countries than in France, 
but justice is justice the world over, and the want of 
it is resented by all races. Finally, the Exposition 
was, above all events I have ever experienced, a 
" pleasure exertion." One could not go about from 
place to place without vexatious delays and constant 
expense. The Seine boats were the only real con- 
venience. The Moving Platform was more like a 
toy than an aid, and circumscribed a very limited 
circle, half of which was outside the grounds. Mr. 
"Weller once remarked, " No charge for sitting 
down, as the king said after blowing his ministers 
up." This may have been a pleasantry in London, 
but it was no joke in Paris. Sitting down was ex- 
pensive in the French Exposition. Mr. Twain ex- 
postulates with " That Awful German Language," 
because in it " resting is regarded as doing some- 
thing." But in Paris it is worse than that, resting 
is paying something. If you sank upon a chair (few 
in number and far between), a woman promptly 
presented a bill; the sum was trifling, but the irrita- 

182 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

tion was great. The chair business being a " con- 
cession" nothing was allowed to interfere with it. 
There was not an edge, nor a balustrade, nor a soft 
board anywhere on that ground, whereon a tired 
visitor could lean. He had to keep moving on ever- 
lastingly, reminding himself of the dove, who 
" found no rest for the sole of her foot." The re- 
sult was that three or four ordeals were enough for 
the average strength. In my opinion, ten thousand 
free seats would have added ten million more 
visitors. 

Howbeit, confessing its imperfections in an im- 
perfect world, the Exposition was none the less a 
great event. If the Londoner was not there, the 
Berliner was. Germany is making a great push for 
the world's markets, and uses the international ex- 
positions to extend her trade. She is out for busi- 
ness; she is there for ideas; she gets both. The Rus- 
sian was there, too, holding his own surprisingly in 
the march of civilization. The American was there, 
also, with all his enterprise, printing a large daily 
paper with cables and telegrams, giving it away 
as a souvenir, and all for the sake of advertisement 
only. It was an American who, being given a space 
among trees that could not be deported, built a 
house around them, encasing the trunks as pillars, 
the foliage appearing over the glass roof, a " House 
of the Forest of Lebanon," a wonderful exhibit in 

183 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

itself of the triumph of ingenuity over circum- 
stances. In the field of mechanics he was easily 
first, and, as in the yacht race, " There is no sec- 
ond, Your Majesty." Above all, France was there, 
with all her five wits and ten fingers, showing her 
skill matchless, her taste faultless, her fabrics count- 
less. 

Of individual features of the Fair some will 
mention the Eiffel Tower, the beautiful Alexander 
Bridge, the stylish Dame representing the City of 
Paris, and her Gallic Cock making a pun upon the 
national name. Old Paris was a great attraction, 
and the fine arts were a wonderful display, wherein 
lay an agreeable surprise, the creditable exhibit of 
American painting. But, as these and other items, 
are more usually referred to, I will mention an ex- 
hibit in the City of Paris Building that was re- 
markable in its own way. Readers of Les Mise- 
rdbles will remember a chapter entitled " The Earth 
Impoverished by the Sea." It begins in the true 
Hugonian style as follows: 

" Paris casts twenty-five millions of francs 

annually into the sea 

How so and in what way ? 
By day and night. 
For what object ? 
For no object. 
With what thought ? 
Without thinking. 
What to do ? 

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AND OTHER LEAVES 

Nothing. 

By means of what organ ? 

Its sewers." 

Hugo then goes on to give a wonderful history 
of that great under-world, and makes it the scene 
of his most striking chapter. Now in respect to this 
feature of the older city, the modern Parisian might 
use his own proverb, " Nous avons change tout cela." 
In the Paris Building was a notable model of the 
sewer system and of its chemical disposal, down to 
the distribution of its product among blooming 
fields. It showed how the refuse of the city makes 
a revenue for it, showed the transformation of 
wealth from waste, of beauty from ashes, of verdure 
from ordure, of the Garden of Eden from the Valley 
of Hinnom. 

If asked to name the most impressive object in 
Paris, I should not mention the Venus de Milo, nor 
the Salon Carre, " the most beautiful room in the 
world," nor the Bastille, nor the graves of Abelard 
and Heloise,I should unhesitatingly name the Tomb 
of Napoleon. There the French voice is hushed, 
the soldier of the legion and the little child are alike 
awed. It is not, I think, because his name is asso- 
ciated with the great days of a great people, not be- 
cause the Napoleonic spell is still unbroken, not be- 
cause the Frenchman has to look through the mist 
of Sedan to see the glory of Jena. It is mainly due, 
I believe, to an irresistible appeal to the universal 

185 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

heart that is felt there, a touch of nature that makes 
the whole world kin. He lies there in a majestic sar- 
cophagus, surrounded bj his marshals. A simple 
inscription from his will is carved upon it, and in 
that single sentence, that " Napoleonic legend," is 
found the secret of the peculiar impressiveness. 
The beholder is conscious of a thought passing 
through his mind, something like this: " Here lies 
the man who wrote his name above kings; the iron 
man; who made a highway through forts and bat- 
tle-fields unto all the capitals of Europe; carpeted 
that highway with captured flags and trampled con- 
stitutions; but when he came to the end of ambition, 
he found his heart turning to his own home and to 
his own neighbors." Like the Shunammite of old, 
who would not be spoken for to the king nor to the 
captain of the host ; " I dwell among mine own 
people." There is no happiness higher than to be 
among those who love you. In the " Napoleonic 
legend," cut above the tomb, one hears both the 
note of the Shunammite and of John Howard 
Payne, 



JE DESIRE QUE MES CENDRES REPOSENT 

SUR LES BORDS DE LA SEINE AU MILIEU 

DE CE PEUPLE FRANCAIS QUE J'AI TANT AIME." 



XXIII 
ENGLAND 

THE twenty-three miles of turbulent water 
that separates England from the Continent, 
form the most important space on the map 
of the globe. But for that little interval, there 
would have been no distinct nationality, no Eng- 
lish language and character, no United States of 
America. England would have been a Denmark; 
her history the " history of a province." Salt-water 
has been the preservative of the British island. 

It is a great relief to get away from a situation 
where your Italian tongue is dependent largely up- 
on your American " cheek," where your French is 
" after the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe," and where 
your polite, but impatient foreigner looks as if ready 
to say, with the Irish judge to the prisoner, " We 
want nothing from you but silence, and very little 
of that." Yes, a traveller landing in England feels 
very much like a dumb man restored to speech. On 
this account, when an American comes into the 
187 



A LEAVE OP ABSENCE 

neighborhood of Greenwich, he takes an observa- 
tion; it is a linguistic one. He observes that no- 
body ever assumes such liberties with the Eng- 
lish tongue as the English do, beginning with the 
word English itself, which they spell with an E and 
pronounce with an I. London is Lunnon, Chelten- 
ham is Cheltnum, Magdalen is Maudlin, Chol- 
mondeley is Chumley ; while if you ask a Londoner 
to spell " maroon," he will say that it contains " a 
hem and a hay and a hare, two hoes and a hen." 
Many Britons have dispensed with the words good 
and bad; in common parlance, a fine play is a 
" blooming " play, its opposite is a " bloody " play. 
Extravagance and superlatives are not confined to 
America. I saw extensively advertised a certain 
" Millennium flour," and in classic Oxford, I noted 
this euphuism, " Even as the sun dazzles the eye, 
so do the merits of Belton's tires astound the imagi- 
nation." Englishmen's voices are throaty, sound as 
if their collars were too tight; but the ladies' voices 
are distinct and flute-like. 

Another observation an American soon makes is, 
that he is no longer in a republic. He i3 where one 
class differs from another class in glory. Not that 
Britons are generally restive under it. " All Eng- 
lishmen love a lord," is a proverb. No building 
can be dedicated, no banquet properly digested, 
unless " his lordship " is in the chief place. In just 

188 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

one spot, however, the yoke chafes. It is in relig- 
ion. The Dissenters find it hard to be patronized; 
they have to go softly before the Establishment. 
Robert Browning, with some misgiving, felt it to 
be his duty to acknowledge to Elizabeth Barrett 
that he belonged to the Congregationalists. The 
feeling toward Dissent is constantly showing itself 
in odd ways. In one of Baring-Gould's stories, two 
lovers had a coolness, during whose continuance the 
girl attended chapel and was converted, whereupon 
the squire adds, " The week after there came a 
quack female dentist to Tavistock, and I went and 
had one of my back teeth out. . . . I let her 
understand that if she chose to be revived by Chapel- 
ites, I'd have my teeth drawn by quacks. I'd stand 
none of her nonsense." But, on the whole, Dissent 
is stronger for being without State patronage; the 
" Non-conformist conscience " is increasingly a fac- 
tor in British politics; the day when rural Eng- 
land was humorously said to be composed of 
" hierarchy and squirearchy " is passing; and to-day 
many devout Churchmen are ready to welcome the 
inevitable coming of disestablishment and the plac- 
ing of the great Church of England on the same 
footing as their nobly independent off-spring, the 
Protestant Episcopal Church of America. 

The most pleasing feature of the class system in 
England is royalty. Liberals vie with Conserva- 

189 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

tives in voting generous bounties to the seed-royal, 
and all ranks show them enthusiastic loyalty. The 
Queen is universally beloved. I overheard a wash- 
erwoman in the streets of Cambridge say, after the 
relief of Mafeking, " Well, the Queen, dear lady, 
will be so glad to hear this! " It touched me, to 
think that this humble woman's first thought was 
for the heart of her Sovereign. The Prince of 
Wales is very popular, enjoying the full sense of 
that left-handed compliment, " With all thy faults 
I love thee still." The Princess is more than popu- 
lar; she creates enthusiasm. At an exhibit I saw, 
made by a " lightning artist " in London, the pro- 
file of that fair Danish face was instantly recog- 
nized and greeted with hand and voice. They like 
to talk and read about the royal family. The 
" Court Circular," containing their doings, is religi- 
ously scanned every day. An Oxford man in- 
formed me at length and with fervor on the subject, 
stating, among other things, that the proper address 
for the Prince was " Sir," and for the Queen, " Ma- 
dam." It is related that two little girls, while 
playing in a park, unexpectedly met Her Majesty, 
and, being ignorant of court etiquette, fell back on 
Scriptural knowledge, saying, " O Queen, live for 
ever!" This greatly pleased and amused Her Ma- 
jesty. They are fond of pet names in the royal 
family. The Duke of Fife is called " Macduff," 

190 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

the Duchess, being very retiring, is called " Her 
Royal Shyness," the little Prince Edward of York 
is known as " the New Boy," the Princess Patricia 
of Connaught, born on St. Patrick's day, is affec- 
tionately called " Paddy." The Prince and Prin- 
cess of Wales are in constant demand for fairs, ba- 
zaars, dedications and other public functions. A 
fair held for the English soldiers was in progress, 
while I was in London, which event was made a so- 
ciety success by the presence, contributions, and 
liberal purchases of the Princess. The Prince is a 
neat and effective public speaker; the Princess is a 
winsome soul. A pleasant illustration of this is 
told of her. She was attending a dairy exhibit, and 
remarked to the manager, " I have always heard 
that the best butter comes from Denmark. Is it 
true ? " The manager hesitated a moment, then 
said, " No, your Highness, Denmark sends us the 
best princesses, but the best butter comes from Dev- 
onshire." This is perhaps a case where the Psalm- 
ist would say, " his words were smoother than but- 
ter." 



Addendum. — While this book is in the press, the 
Queen has passed from the Kingdom of Eng- 
land to the Kingdom of Heaven, and I cannot for- 
bear to lay my tribute on her honored tomb. From 
the moment when they told the child of ten years 

191 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

old the forecast of her life, and she held up her 
little hand to say, " I will be good! " she has justi- 
fied the promise. A Sovereign of England reigns, 
not rules; her sphere is limited, but " She hath done 
what she could." She has worn victoriously the 
triple crown of woman, wife and sovereign, " the 
queenliest of women and the womanliest of queens." 



XXIV 
CATHEDRALS AND UNIVERSITIES 

CATHEDRAL means a " place for sitting 
down/' and is applied originally to the 
bishop's bench or throne. That which 
made a church into a cathedral was not its size 
(there are many churches in England larger than 
the cathedral in Oxford), but the episcopal resi- 
dence. It is all a part of the ecclesiastical idea 
which makes everything centre about His Grace, 
the Bishop. According to their vocabulary a bishop 
is " wedded to his see," a relation symbolized by 
the bishop's ring; if he die, the see is said to be 
" widowed." The difference between Old Eng- 
land and New England seems to be this, they speak 
of their minister as married to his charge, with us 
he is merely engaged. But to return to the cathe- 
dral, it is like the person of David ; " goodly to look 
to," it is like the king's daughter, " all glorious 
within." There is something wonderfully inspir- 
ing in those forms of grace and beauty wrought out 
in the intractable stone, or in those interiors of wood 

193 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

and stained glass, like the appearance of a rainbow 
seen through an oak. 

Whether the cathedral accomplishes its function 
of incitement to worship, is not clear. I attended a 
service at Winchester one beautiful Friday morn- 
ing. A vested choir of forty sang and counter-sang 
in antiphonal beauty. A brilliantly robed ecclesiast 
read the Psalms in a tone that is heard neither in 
heaven above nor in earth beneath. He was escort- 
ed to the lectern and back again to his seat by a 
vested figure armed with a holy mace, possibly to 
prevent people from mobbing him en route for 
speaking to us in that tone of voice. We had collects 
sung and collects intoned, accompanied by a mag- 
nificent organ, the whole service enclosed behind 
screens of exquisitely carved wood, a wonder of 
music and beauty. ]STow, how many did that ma- 
jestic service draw in its train, think you? The an- 
swer reminds one of the fisherman's response to the 
query, " How many have you caught? " " Well, 
if I get the one I'm after and one more, I shall have 
two." Besides the sexton, there were just two of us. 
Probably that was an exceptional day, and doubt- 
less the cathedral has upon occasions its thousands. 
In any wise, we all admit that the cathedral has a 
mission of its own, and that the mere association of 
so magnificent an edifice with the worship of God 
is uplifting to all parts of the religious life. 

194 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

Of the several cathedrals that I saw, Peterboro', 
Ely, Winchester, St. Paul's, Oxford, Salisbury, the 
noblest far was the last. It is " the most perfect 
monument of mediseval Christianity in England." 
It is not blackened by smoke as is St. Paul's. Sal- 
isbury meets the usual condition of the English 
cathedral in being situated in a small town. It is 
not one of the attractions of the place ; it makes the 
place. Two facts stamp themselves upon the be- 
holder at once. The first is the spire, not alone for 
its height, the tallest in England, but for its incom- 
parable grace. It is the finger of the church point- 
ing toward the home of the soul. The other striking 
feature of Salisbury Cathedral is " The Close," the 
green lawn with tree-girt paths. In some cases you 
cannot " walk round about Zion;" there is no room 
anywhere to get a good view of the Hegensburger 
Dom, for example. Cologne Cathedral, too, is grie- 
vously encroached upon by shops and alleys. But 
Salisbury allows you a perfect perspective. You 
can see it across billowy lawns or through interlac- 
ing trees, that duplicate its Gothic arches. You 
can watch its shadows steal over the sward, and at 
every angle contrast its gray sky-line with the fleecy 
cloud. That Close is ever the " haven of religious 
calm " in the midst of a workaday world. 

Every reader of " Tom Brown " longs to see 
something of English school and 'Varsity life. 

195 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

Eton, Harrow, and Winchester are the three great 
schools, the last two of which I saw. Harrow, 
half an hour's ride from London, is set upon a hill, 
with glorious views of English landscape around it. 
Here I first saw the English schoolboy with shining 
morning face. He was dressed like hundreds of his 
companions in the " Eton jacket " and white straw 
hat. The dress is not obligatory, but he is in the 
land where it is easier to storm a masked battery 
than to fly in the face of a precedent. Their ath- 
letic fields are exceedingly attractive. They are 
elaborately fitted and are calculated to induce every 
kind of exertion, the boy earning his happiness by 
the sweat of his brow. The buildings are not re- 
markable and the school owes much of its popular- 
ity to its athletic standing, especially to its contests 
with Eton. Eor the annual Eton-Harrow cricket 
match, Britons will tell you, is absorbing enough 
to make the sun stand still in Surrey, and the moon 
go not down in Middlesex, till the struggle is over. 

Winchester is in the extreme south of England, 
a beautiful and historic old town. The school build- 
ings are more venerable than in Harrow, while the 
near-by cathedral adds a dignity and charm of its 
own. The boys have stamped their wit upon the 
premises; the lavatory is called "Moab," and the 
place for shoe-blacking " Edom," in allusion to the 
Psalmist's expression, " Moab is my wash-pot; over 

196 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

Edom will I cast out my shoe." The boy at Win- 
chester may go into the cathedral, and see there 
stone after stone commemorative of former school- 
boys, who wrote their names high in the history of 
their country, in army life, in Parliament, in lit- 
erature. He realizes that these men once kept the 
bridge with Horatius, as he is doing in the same 
Latin form now, or kept the wicket in the field, as 
himself and companions to-day. The silent influ- 
ences of such traditions irresistibly strengthen within 
the boy that Nelsonian conviction, " England ex- 
pects every man to do his duty." That alone, in 
the making of character, is worth more than the 
prizes of scholarship or the treasures of boyish af- 
fection. 

The most English thing in England is the 'Varsity. 
All England annually divides upon the light blue 
of Cambridge and the dark blue of Oxford. There 
is a flavor about each place that cannot be described 
nor analyzed. One detects the separate ingredi- 
ents of antiquity, architecture, history, literature, 
scholarship and personality. Brain and brawn and 
breeding are thrown into the mortar; muscle and 
mathematics are intermingled. They show you 
rooms where poets, statesmen and national giants 
grew to their strength. There is the spot where Wes- 
ley smote the rock and waters gushed out, " waters 
to swim in," the millions of Methodism. Yonder 

197 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

is the room where Grey learned how to use adjectives 
in a country grave-yard. To see all those places 
set in the exquisite beauty of mullioned windows 
and carved stone, or bordered with ivy and velvet 
turf, or laved by the waters of the Cam and Isis that 
go softly, is to add a rare pleasure to deep feeling. 
Each university has its peculiar charm. On the 
one hand, nothing can exceed the " Backs " or 
lawns behind the colleges bordering the Cam; on 
the other, High Street, Oxford, is fine enough 
to be called " the most beautiful street in Europe." 
The common type of college in each university 
is that of a large building enclosing a court, called 
the " quad," with a chapel and a dinmg-hall. The 
students are arrayed in cap and gown when on aca- 
demic duty, going to lectures or attending chapel. 
They are powerful executives with the national 
weapons, the knife and fork, or with the twin relics 
of the wooden age, the bat and oar. I did not see 
the bumping races, being in advance of " Eights 
Week," by a fortnight, but I saw cricket in full 
swing. To my hotel, the Mitre, came the best 
known man in England. His name was not the 
Marquis of Salisbury, nor Sir Thomas Lipton, but 
Dr. W. R. Grace, the greatest cricketer of all time. 
Other men have run their thousands, but Grace his 
tens of thousands. Englishmen drop their voices 
in awe, when they speak of " "W. R.," as he is fa- 

198 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

niiliarly called. A national testimonial of £15,000 
was tendered him a few years ago, contributed by all 
cricket clubs in the realm, partly because of his 
matchless prowess and partly because of the high 
character he had given to the national game. He is 
a tall man, with a powerful frame, a Saul in Israel, 
a collegian's idol. He had brought up an eleven 
from London to play the University. I went over 
to see it during parts of two days; but, try as I would, 
I could develop no enthusiasm. It is not a spec- 
tators' game. There is more " ginger " in one in- 
ning of Yale baseball than in three weeks of Ox- 
ford cricket. 



XXV 

ENGLISH SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS 

THE faces of Englishmen are calmer than 
ours. This is not attributable to easier cir- 
cumstances, for life is more strenuous in 
the Mother Country; but is rightly ascribed, I 
think, to their climate. The sun does not smite 
them by day nor the moon by night. The wind is 
tempered to the shorn lamb, and to the lamb's 
owner. The " garish light of day," is not so garish 
with them, and the squint, the wrinkle and the 
crow's feet are lacking accordingly. This fact of 
calmness may have something to do with the charge 
of " English reserve," but in point of fact, said 
reserve, like the report of Mark Twain's death, " is 
greatly exaggerated." That reserve I saw broken 
in pieces like a potter's vessel. When the relief of 
Mafeking was announced, England plunged into a 
delirium of joy. In Cambridge a mammoth bon- 
fire was prepared with architectural skill. It was 
placed in Midsummer Park, built as high as a two- 

200 



AND OTHEK LEAVES 

story house, garlanded and inscribed with mottoes 
of joy. In Oxford troops of students paraded the 
streets, countermarched by troops of girls. Whole- 
sale kissing was resorted to, and seemed to give relief 
to the public mind ! There were countless encount- 
ers between embracer and embraced, osculation and 
interosculation by the shipload and the fishing 
smack. 

Britons are passionate lovers of their island-home, 
and with reason. The green lanes of old England 
are of the kind from which there is no turning. 
Linnaeus fell upon his knees when he beheld the 
gorse in blossom, and there is even greater occasion 
for thanksgiving when one beholds the hawthorn 
in bloom. Then the proverb of " homely as a hedge 
fence " becomes a proverb of " Solomon in all his 
glory." England is more of a Florida than Ameri- 
ca, and the national flower, the rose, is a revelation 
of splendor. The War of the Roses is over, but the 
triumph of the roses will never cease to be. 

England is a land of lovely homes, of countless 
parks, of great wealth expended on a small area, 
of picturesque ruins beautified by that rare old 
plant, the ivy green. Ruskin, speaking of America, 
declared that he could not live in a country that 
had no castles. But there 

The splendor falls on castle walls, 
And snowy summits old in story. 

201 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

We must concede them this. America has nothing 
to compare with Warwick Castle, either for beauty 
or romantic charm. At the gate we can still seem 
to hear, " Up drawbridge, grooms! What, warder, 
ho! Let the port-cullis fall ! " On the lake we can 
still see the swan " float double, swan and shadow." 
The very footman seems to have stepped out of an 
age " When Knighthood was in Flower." He 
greatly appreciated my enjoyment of the Warwick 
spell, and, letting down a chain, put up by the fam- 
ily to guard a certain room, remarked, " What the 
eye does not see the heart need not grieve at. Go 
over this bar and look at that view." The which 
I paid for; for this is the land of the pheasant, the 
fox, and the fee. 

The traveller through England is constantly and 
delightfully reminded of numberless allusions in 
English literature and history. You say to your- 
self in Oxford, Here is where Pendennis disported 
himself like a prince till his credit gave out; and 
there is where Tom Brown's boat bumped little 
Oriel " in the Gut." Elsewhere you say, There is 
old Major Pendennis himself, going down to Lord 
Steyne's country house ; and here is the very inn, the 
Hop Pole of Tewkesbury, where Mr. Pickwick 
drove in on his way to Birmingham with Mr. 
Sawyer and Sam Weller on top of the chaise. 
There is Tennyson's brook, as it bickers down the 
202 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

valley, and there is Wordworth's primrose by the 
river's brim. There are " The Fens," where the 
Saxons made their last unsuccessful stand against 
their foes, and there is Lant Street in the Borough, 
where Mr. Bob Sawyer made his last unsuccessful 
stand against Mrs. Raddle. 

I am aware that the foolish affectation of anglo- 
maniacs has produced a reaction in some minds 
against the Mother Country, and the example of 
certain self-expatriated Americans has added to it. 
But not to admire Old England for her true glories 
and Divinely wrought beauty would be sinning 
against sense and sensibility. An era of good feel- 
ing between the two nations has grown up in our 
day. Long may it last! We have seen hands 
clasped across the sea, and, though the Atlantic does 
its best to saturate and weaken Anglo-Saxon ties, 
it is, at length, demonstrated beyond a perad venture 
that blood is thicker than water. In view of all the 
noble history and native loveliness of that little isle, 
I could paraphrase the sentiment of Lord Chatham, 
and say, " If I were an Englishman, as I am an 
American, I would never lay down my allegiance, 
never, never, nevee! " 



XXVI 

THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE 

IN the heart of England lies Stratford, the 
Mecca of all English-speaking races. Ameri- 
cans are glad to learn that they furnish a 
larger number of pilgrims to his shrine than the 
home nation. They note the memorial fountain in 
the public square, the gift of a noble-hearted Ameri- 
can, Mr. George W. Childs, and remark, with pride 
that the American window in Holy Trinity Church 
is the finest of all. The traveller on arrival is not 
in any doubt of his being in Shakespeare's town. 
Relics and pictures of the Swan of Avon are every- 
where exposed for sale, and even the sign of " The 
Shakespeare Stables " meets the eye. The Me- 
morial Building on the bank of the Avon contains 
all known editions of his works, including some in 
Arabic and Hindustanee. Many places of inciden- 
tal interest abound, like the house where John Har- 
vard was born, founder of Harvard University. 
But the four chief places of interest are those of 
the poet's birth, courtship, residence and burial. 

204 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

Shakespeare's birthplace, on Henley Street, has 
been kept in repair, and, thanks to a good constitu- 
tion, is still very much as it was on that day when 
they came to John Shakespeare and said, " There is 
a man-child born into the world." It is plumb with 
the street line, but has a rare old garden beside 
and back of it, which is appropriately filled with 
flowers mentioned in his works. Among them are 
Ophelia's offerings, " There's rosemary, that's for 
remembrance : and there is pansies, that's 

for thoughts." The house passed from owner to 
owner for three hundred years, until Mr. P. T. Bar- 
num, in 1847, characteristically proposed to buy it 
and transport it to America. This roused the Brit- 
ish spirit, and the premises are now national prop- 
erty. The walls are covered with signatures, some 
of which are familiar, as Edmund Kean, Charles 
Dickens, Wm. M. Thackeray, and W. Scott. A 
part of the interior is used for a museum of Shakes- 
peareana. Among them I noted a " Booke of the 
Hundred Merry Tales," alluded to in Act 2, of 
" Much Ado About Nothing," and was moved to 
transcribe the following extract : 

" $nof0er twomcm fflere twac gf ftneefgb at ge 
mae of requie, t»0gfe ge corse of 0er 0u0fiance fag 
on ge fiere in ge c0grc0e. £o t»0ome a gounge ma 
cam ano epafte t»gf 0er in 0er ere a& f 0owg0e if 0afc 

205 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

ten for com mater cocernging ge funeraff, (0oi»e 6e 
if 0e 0pa£e of no 6uc0e mat er fiuf onefg twotwgo 0er 
gf 0e mggfjf fie 0er 0ue6anoe to t»0om 00e anetwereo 
ano eago f #U0, J^r, fig mg trout 0e 3 am eorp gf 
Be come 60 fate, for 3 am epeo aff reop, for 3 t»ae 
maoe twife geefer cap to another man." 

Anne Hathaway's cottage is reached by a lovely 
walk across green fields. It is a vine-clad cottage, 
indeed, with an old-fashioned garden in front, from 
which the little maid plucked me bachelor's but- 
tons and pinks. There is the very settle by the 
chimney-corner where Will and Anne watched the 
fire and told each other's fortunes in " the hollow 
down by the flare." Without is the garden seat 
where 

'' In such a night 
Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, 
Stealing her soul with many vows of faith." 

The house is still kept by some descendant or con- 
nection of the Hathaways, and on asking her when 
the rush of visitors came, she answered, " From 
Whissuntide to the first of Hoctober, sir." 

Shakespeare's life in Stratford, after he was six 
or seven, was mainly spent in the " New Place." 
On one side of it is the Guildhall, or school, where 
the boy got his " small Latin and less Greek;" op- 
posite is The Falcon Inn, where he often " set the 

206 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

table in a roar." In New Place he wrote his later 
plays and spent his happiest years. The house sur- 
vived to 1757, when its owner, the Rev. Francis 
Gastrell, insensible to its value, and annoyed by 
visitors, pulled it down! Thus made he himself a 
third with the man who fired the temple of Ephesus 
and the one who destroyed the library of Alexan- 
dria. He is the best hated man of modern times. 
But the grounds are still laid out as Shakespeare 
left them, the grandson of his famous mulberry 
tree still blooms, and the foundations of the house 
are carefully boxed and exposed to view. One can 
still ramble thoughtfully in the enclosure, thinking 
of that other garden, the Eden of great minds, 

" Within that circle none durst walk but he." 

Holy Trinity it a beautiful old church, behind 
which flows the Avon. It is elm-bordered and ivy- 
clad. Within the chancel, indicative of the esteem 
in which the Bard was held, are placed the mortal 
remains of the immortal man. The curse that he 
pronounced upon the mover of his bones has been 
respected. Beneath the brass, within the stone, 
he waits the resurrection day. A bust on the wall 
above exhibits the grave and reverent mien of the 
poet, the man of hazel eyes and auburn hair, the 
unforgetable face. Shakespeare died, old in deeds, 
not years; in actions, not in figures on a dial. A 

207 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

few months before his decease he drafted his own 
will, and made therein his confession of faith, 

" 3 comment mg couf info f0e 0anbc of <0oo mg 
Creator, Roping, anb aseurecfg fiefietring, f0roug0 
f 0e onfp merits of %tmn Christ mg JJatnour, to 6e 
mabe parfafter of fife etjerfaefing." 



XXVII 
HOMEWARD BOUND 

THE beginning and ending of certain great 
affairs are water-marked. The Exodus was 
marked by the Red Sea and the Jordan, 
the Spanish War by Manila Bay and Santiago. 
As to life itself, " trailing clouds of glory do we 
come," and " eras ingens iterabimus aequor," do 
we go. So is it with a foreign tour. The first and 
last impression left on the mind is oceanic. It is 
not easily washed away. The Atlantic may disturb 
the body; it composes the mind. It is the one 
thing needful to give our European ideas the right 
perspective; they suffer a sea change and fall into 
order. 

Of " the multitudinous seas," I may not write. 
Who can bring back the ocean and compress it in 
a drop of ink ? Of sea-life itself the voyager enjoys 
volumes. The games on deck, the music in the 
cabin, the resources of the library are all entertain- 
ing. Conversation with the mate may draw out an 

209 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

account of his shipwreck on the North Pacific, his 
boat picked up, its companion boat never heard 
from. He tells you how, on the last voyage, the St. 
Paul shipped a sea, carrying overboard a Swedish 
lady, who was never so much as sighted again. 
The great liner cannot be backed in a moment, and 
would run six miles by its own momentum alone, 
after the engines were stopped. Sea stories at first- 
hands are wonderfully vivid. 

Fellow-travellers furnish each other with great 
entertainment. There is always a man aboard who 
walks the deck like the one Thackeray saw going 
down the Strand, and accosted with the inquiry, 
" Excuse me, sir, but are you anybody in particu- 
lar? " There is the fault-finder, complaining of the 
arrangements (who does not live half so well at 
home), to whom you are tempted to tell the land- 
lord's story, " A hundred and ten men have wiped 
on that towel, and you are the first one to complain." 
There is the woman who is travelling with a dog; 
some persons achieve discomfort, and some have 
discomfort thrust upon them; a woman with a dog 
does both. In the next depth of desperation is the 
person travelling with a small boy, deeply repentant 
now, and coming back a month earlier than planned. 
It reminds you of Mr. Lincoln's explanation, on re- 
turning from church before it was out, having Thad 
in his arms, " I entered this colt, but he kicked 
210 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

around so, I had to withdraw him." Then there is 
the "summer girl," heaven bless her! No ship 
can expect any luck without her. There is a young 
man, too, in her company, a diplomatist, trying to 
arrange a secret treaty with her on the basis of in- 
cluding his name in " the most favored nation 
clause." There is ever the selfish man, who, all 
over Europe, has proved ingenious in ways of slip- 
ping ahead of his proper place in line, or of ousting 
people entitled to seats on top by climbing up some 
other way. But, in the long run, my friend, say 
the run from Southampton to New York, " Be sure 
your sin will find you out." After a while he dis- 
covers that nobody laughs at his jokes, he becomes 
acquainted with the cold shoulder, and the last state 
of that man is worse than the first. There is, also, 
Mark, the son of Tapley, " coming out strong " on 
rainy days, or when people have low spirits on the 
high seas. Humor has a great market on ship- 
board, for, according to Dr. Johnson, " A ship is a 
prison with the additional chance of your being 
drowned." And not on ship-board only; Mr. Beech- 
er observed that to be without a sense of humor 
through life is " like travelling in a wagon without 
springs." It always adds to " the gayety of na- 
tions," and needs no lexicon to be understood in all 
languages. You may see a shipload of people of all 
dialects and religions hugely enjoy some humo- 
211 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

rous incident and be drawn together by it. There is 
the affable man, too, who believes that many 
a " poky " meal can be poked into a blaze, and that 
dyspeptic conditions of travel are best treated by 
the pepsin of agreeable conversation. All these and 
many other types make up the census of that float- 
ing island, a ship at sea. It is a little world by it- 
self, for the time being, strangely drawn together 
as no other experience in life can equal. 

" One port, methought, 

Alike they sought : 
One purpose held, where'er they fare : 

O bounding breeze, 

rushing seas, 
At last, at last, unite them there ! " 

On shipboard one has time to enumerate the 
fruits of travel. For one thing, he has had a great 
Sabbatic, is rested and is refreshed. He has made 
a better bargain than Shylock, having gained by 
his outlay anywhere from four to twenty pounds 
of flesh. He has made ten friends, which add more 
to his happiness than deposits in ten banks. He 
has seen a great deal, and, as it is said, one learns 
eighty times as much from the sense of sight as 
from all other senses combined, he has had accord- 
ingly a great education. He has a peddler's pack of 
souvenirs, too, which will remind him of happy 
212 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

days, adorn his home, and help make conversation 
for all time to come with monosyllabic visitors. If 
he be a minister, he has a large stock of illustrations 
beginning with, " When I was abroad in 1900," 
which will eventually make many of his people 
wish that he would go abroad again. While some 
travellers' anecdotes may be, like Mrs. Leo Hunter's 
Ode, " all point," others remind one of that vote 
of thanks after the lecture, " to which we have so 
ably listened." There are other fruits of travel pe- 
culiar to individuals, and cherished by them for 
life; but there is one fruit more valuable than all 
others, which is common to everybody, which affects 
all classes, and both sexes — it is the increase of patri- 
otism. 

The feeling of national pride may often be ill- 
founded. It is sometimes a weakness that can easily 
be satirized. The most cogent reason with all of us 
for being an American is that given by the man who 
was asked why he was a bachelor, "Because I was born 
so." But " The Eeturn of the Native," the native 
American from a European tour, is accompanied 
with a deep-seated conviction that his lines are cast 
in pleasant places, with a realization of his country's 
worth, and with a love for her that many waters 
cannot quench. America itself is an unfailing topic 
of conversation on homeward voyages. It is no 
longer a blind faith that is in him, a pagan admira- 

213 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

tion that makes him say, " My country right or 
wrong;" it is a discriminating affection that he car- 
ries with him past Sandy Hook. He knows that 
Europe surpasses America in many things, in good 
roads, in management of cities, in plentiful holi- 
days, and popular methods of driving dull care 
away, in a generally larger outlook upon the world 
(especially in England), in a superior sense of 
beauty, and a wider diffusion of art. On the other 
hand, he realizes that America is in advance of all 
nations in the respect paid womanhood, in the oppor- 
tunity it gives to religion by its absolute sepa- 
ration from the State, in the freedom of the indi- 
vidual, who does not have to be vised, endorsed, or 
passported from city to city, or expected to give an 
account of himself like a man out of prison on a 
conditional pardon. The American does not live 
where " the balance of power " makes impossible 
the balance of the treasury sheet. The armies of 
Europe impoverish the land, reminding him of that 
picture of the four men, the one above the other. 
On top a king, with the legend, " I reign for all;" 
the second, a priest with the legend, " I pray for 
all;" the third, a soldier, "I fight for all;" at the 
bottom a workman with the label, " I pay for all." 
The American thinks of these things abroad; thinks 
by contrast of a land that contains the most news- 
papers, the most schools, the most hospitals, the most 

214 



AND OTHER LEAVES 

churches of all lands; thinks of the buoyancy and 
enterprise of his own nation, facing its golden age, 
as Madame DeStael called her, " UAvenir du 
Monde," the Future of the World; and so, after see- 
ing how the other half lives, returns to his own hemi- 
sphere, with the ejaculation of Webster, " Thank 
God, I, too, am an American! " 

Meanwhile the St. Paul is profiting daily by her 
vis a tergo, the twin propellers. Every noon the 
bulletin-board is scanned, and the long southwester- 
ly line is made longer upon the chart. 

The run from Cherbourg, whence the distance is 
computed, to Sandy Hook, tabulates as follows: 



To noon of 


Hours, min. 


Knots. 


Knots per hour. 


May 27 


19.05 
24.48 
24.46 
24.39 
24.42 
24.43 
18.00 


377 
473 
492 
466 
482 
485 
365 


19.75 


May 28 


19.07 


May 29 


19.86 


May 30 


18.90 


May 31 

June 1 


19.51 
19.55 


June 2 (6 a.m.) 


20.27 



Total, 3,140 knots; 6 days, 16 hours, 43 minutes; 
an average of 19.60 knots for the voyage; or 22.54 
land miles per hour. 

At length there comes a delirious moment when 
the engine ceases her throbbing, and his own heart 
makes up for it in additional beats. He sees behind 

215 



A LEAVE OF ABSENCE 

him the Atlantic halted by the forts at the Narrows, 
and there are her proud waves stayed. He sees be- 
fore him the majestic Hudson coming down to the 
Harlem with her tremendous majority. He sees 
the picturesque sky-line of Manhattan Island, and 
the moving life of that busy, roomy, cheery bay. 
But, best of all, he sees from many a height on sea 
and land the Star Spangled Banner. Always a 
beautiful emblem in itself, it speaks to him of a land 
that is fairer than day, .of grand mountains and noble 
rivers — his own! It speaks to him of great pages 
in his country's history, of heroic sacrifice, of pain 
borne in secret, of counting not the life dear unto 
oneself. 

" For every star in that field of blue, 
And for every stripe of crimson hue, 
Ten thousand of the brave and true 
Have lain them down and died." 

Many an eye has danced to see that banner in 
the sky, his own among them, but never does it 
appear so radiant above, never are his eyes so jubi- 
lant, so misty beneath as when, gazing on those bil- 
lowy folds, the banner welcomes him with the 
matchless name of 

"HOME!" 



■Jtw-» 






MAY 23 190 



